A Short History of “Black Paranoia” » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

by ALEXANDER COCKBURN and JEFFREY ST. CLAIR: CounterPunch

WEEKEND EDITION OCTOBER 24-26, 2014

The fury among American blacks sparked by Gary Webb’s “DarkAlliance” series was powerful enough to cause serious concern to the U.S. government, urban mayors, and major newspapers, and even prompted CIA Director John Deutch to make an extraordinary appearance at a town meeting in South Central Los Angeles, where Rep. Maxine Waters was accused of fanning the flames of “black paranoia.” We will now briefly outline why this “paranoia” is amply justified and why Webb’s series very reasonably struck a chord in the black community.

In all discussions of “black paranoia” during the Webb affair, white commentators invariably conceded—as indeed they had to—that the one instance where such fears were entirely justified was the infamous Tuskegee experiments. Yet in the press coverage no more than a sentence or two was devoted to any account of what actually happened at Tuskegee.

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