One of the essential features of American identity is anticommunism and the kind of anti-intellectualism that comes with it, and Black communities have never adopted _that_ American identity wholesale.
I said that, in the absence of the "political context where organic intellectuals of the class, other workers, and traditional intellectuals can meet regularly and work together" in the USA, "religious institutions come close to providing a substitute for what Gramsci had in mind." It's significant that the most influential Black intellectuals, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, were both religious intellectuals (Christianity for MLK, Islam for Malcolm).
> Or take other U.S. intellectuals, such as Walter Reuther or any other
> union leader for that matter. Or take our own Jim Straub. As far as
> I am concerned he is an intellectual.
As far as organized labor is concerned, the quintessential organic intellectual of it today is Andy Stern, not Reuther or Straub. What does that say? -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>