Black conservatives and the policy of Constructive Engagement, 1981-1989

This thesis comprises the first critical engagement with the thought and praxis of conservative African American intellectuals and leaders on apartheid South Africa in the 1980s. It examines their attitudes to apartheid South Africa, their practical engagement with the Reagan administration’s policy of Constructive Engagement, and their relationship with antiapartheid activists in the United States and abroad. In doing so, it challenges the marginalisation of Black conservatism in African American history and widens the scope of black internationalism to include a conservative internationalist and developmentalist tradition whose depth and breadth has as yet been little accounted for.