ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the task of contextualizing investigations of Afro-American political thought in order to more clearly define the ideological component of the relationship between black Americans and American liberalism. Jennifer Hochschild understands Gunnar Myrdal to have insisted that the American dilemma was simply the failure of liberal democratic practices to coincide with liberal democratic theory. The relationship between the black American experience and the terms and forms of American liberalism has never been drawn very precisely. There has been a distinct disjuncture between the historiography of Anglo-American political thought and the historiography of black American political thought. The imperatives of strong criticism suggest the need to locate and describe black political discourses within the context of the historical development of Anglo-American political thought. The chapter suggests that Hochschild's dilemma presents itself as the need for black people to interrogate the terms upon which American freedom has been offered to them and the terms upon which they have responded.
