describes them.
It is the experience of cultural isolation, not so much of being a stranger in a strange land as of being a stranger in a land known all too well. That is what Grier and Cobbs mean when they speak of an "ethos" (1968, p. 204) that includes a presumption of black inferiority. To be sure, that may have the effect of creating a sense of black community, but whatever psychological experience black persons have of community among themselves must be tempered by the sense of alienation. The many specific examples Grier and Cobbs give of how alienation is experienced and hatred is enacted and thereby preserves that ethos serve to drive home this fundamental point. The whole question of culture--whether alien, participatory, or in the term of Stampp (1956) regarding antebellum slaves, "between two cultures"--is a fundamental and highly personal psychological experience for blacks as Grier and Cobbs explain it. This view was very much reinforced by contemporaneous commentary.
By 1968, the views of Malcolm X, who had been identified with blac
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