I am sorry to have not responded sooner--some things got crazy here. Also sorry that this last fragmentary and confusing bit stayed in at the end of the post I sent: "Pan-Africanist orientation circulated both within and outside of self-identified black nationalist rhetoric, organizations, analyses, etc." I had meant to delete it because I didn't finish the thought.
I was trying to get maybe three things said:
1) That what we refer to as "identity" when we consider it as part of the phrase "identity politics" is not unlike other forms of self-under- standing in regard to a larger social world.
2) That black nationalism is so broad a term that rather than enter into a discussion that defined and evaluated it once and for all, I was urging people interested in the thread to think about it both as com- plexly manifested in black people's commonsense understanding of the world and as fungible even in its more directly stated forms-- like the NOI. As any kind of commonsense is messy, self-con- tradictory, sometimes politically incoherent, sometimes very smart and efficacious when it finds political purpose, so too is black nationalism manifested in black commonsense.
3) That black nationalism manifested in black people's commonsense speaks a response to history.
What ties together thinking about black nationalism, identity, and capitalism for me is that it offers me something to speak with and against in order to direct attention outward to an international world as well as inward to a more critical understanding of the U.S. and of one's own position therein.
Example: My black students (both the younger ones I teach in the university and the adults in community courses I've taught) think of themselves as black people in an uncomplicated way for only about 30 seconds until something--some bit of information, some statement of historical reality, some political insight, hell, even simply some opinion about music--is voiced about which there is even the smallest disagreement. At that point, "blackness" as a whole, pure, and untroubled "identity" breaks down while everyone is moved to actually think about what is at stake. Now, I'm not claiming that this breakdown only happens within considerations of racial identity; from my experience, I see it happen constantly around all kinds of identity claims including those understandings that many of us don't think of as "identity." I'm interested in the breakdown because depend- ing on what I use to address the breakdown and how I take seriously where they began, I'm able to move us to what I want to talk about: class; heterosexism, gender, the relation of black people in the U.S. to the U.S. state and its national and international imperatives.
So, I work with and against the grain of starting places. I've spent alot of time working with 19th century and 20th century black rhetoric, historical documents, political organizations, newspapers, etc., and one of the things most apparent to me is that the fragmentari- ness of black identity is a very old story indeed. And the knitting together of fissures is the work of imperatives both within the group and from outside of the group. Therefore, being "black" is meaningful, but only with attention to what else is happening. I read in your response to Charles Brown that you thought that while there might be ten groups today each representing a specific identity within "black," a decade ago there might have been only three. It hasn't ever been the case that there were only a few and now there are many, although it is possible easy to think so given what circulates most visibly in the larger public fora. What looks like proliferation is simply the most recent manifestations that are very visibly represented by virtue of faster means of circulation (mass media, commodity culture, etc.).
Sorry, didn't mean to run on so long.
Wahneema