Black Power and the Transformation from Protest to Policies
In a retrospective examination of black power in 1977, Dianne Pinderhughes analyzed a sample of the speeches and writings of individuals and organizations that had been prominent in the development and articulation of the concept. She found that there was only a narrow area of common agreement on the elements of black power and that on close examination even in this narrow area the common elements were so vague and general "as to be meaningless as far as giving specific direction to participants at the grassroots level."' Joel Aberbach and Jack Walker found similar evidence at the grassroots level. In their study of the attitudes of a sample of Detroit residents, black and white, they found that the overwhelming majority of whites evaluated black power negatively, while opinion among blacks was divided: 42.2 percent were favorable and 49.6 percent were unfavorable. Those who evaluated it favorably saw black power as a call for black unity and an expression of a desire for a fair share of society's opportunities; those who viewed it unfavorably saw it as meaningless.2 And in the early scholarly commentaries on the meaning of black power, one finds similar disagreement.3 Thus, at the elite level, at the