Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Scenario #2
In a discussion on racism, some people argue that Native
peoples suffer from less racism than other people of color
because they generally do not reside in segregated-
neighborhoods within the United States. In addition, some argue
that since tribes now have gaming, Native peoples are no longer
“oppressed.”
Scenario #3
A multiracial campaign develops involving diverse communities
of color in which some participants charge that we must stop the
black/white binary, and end Black hegemony over people of color
politics to develop a more “multicultural” framework. However
this campaign continues to rely on strategies and cultural motifs
developed by the Black Civil Rights struggle in the United States.
This framework has proved to be limited for women of color and people
of color organizing. First, it tends to presume that our communities
have been impacted by white supremacy in the same way.
Consequently, we often assume that all of our communities will share
similar strategies of liberation. In fact, however, our strategies often
run into conflict, for example, one strategy that many people in US-
born communities of color adopt, in order to advance economically out
of impoverished communities, is to join the military. We then become
complicit in oppressing and colonizing communities from other
countries. Meanwhile, people from other countries often adopt the
strategy of moving to the United States to advance economically,
without considering their complicity in settling on the lands of
indigenous peoples that are being colonized by the United States.
Slavery/Capitalism
One pillar of white supremacy is the logic of slavery. As Sora Han, Jared
Sexton, and Angela P. Harris note, this logic renders Black people as
inherently slaveable – as nothing more than property. That is, in this
logic of white supremacy, Blackness becomes equated with
slaveability. The forms of slavery may change – whether it is through
the formal system of slavery, sharecropping, or through the current
prison-industrial complex – but the logic itself has remained
inconsistent.
This logic is the anchor of capitalism. That is, the capitalist system
ultimately commodifies all workers – ones’ own person becomes a
commodity that one must sell in the labor market while the profits of
one’s work are taken by someone else. To keep this capitalist system
in place – which ultimately commodifies most people – the logic of
slavery applies a racial hierarchy to this system. This racial hierarchy
tells people that as long as you are not Black, you have the opportunity
to escape the commodification of capitalism. This helps people who are
not Black to accept their lot in life, because they can feel that at least
they are not at the very bottom of the racial hierarchy – at least they
are not property; at least they are not slaveable.
The logic of slavery can be seen clearly in the current prison industrial
complex (PIC). While the PIC generally incarcerates communities of
color, it seems to be structured primarily on anti-Black racism. That is,
prior to the Civil War, most people in prison were white. However, after
the thirteenth amendment was passed—which banned slavery, except
for those in prison—Black people previously enslaved through the
slavery system were re-enslaved through the prison system. Black
people who had been the property of slave owners became state
property, through the convict leasing system. Thus, we can actually
look at the criminalization of Blackness as a logical extension of
Blackness as property.
Genocide/Colonialism
Orientalism/War
For example, the United States feels entitled to use Orientalist logic to
justify racial profiling of Arab Americans so that it can be strong
enough to fight the “war on terror.” Orientalism also allows the United
States to defend the logics of slavery and genocide, as these practices
enable the United States to stay “strong enough” to fight these
constant wars. What becomes clear then is what Sora Han states—the
United States is not at war, the United States is war. For the system of
white supremacy to stay in place, the United States must always be at
war.
Organizing Implications
Under the old but still potent and dominant model, people of color
organizing was based on the notion of organizing around shared
victimhood. In this model, however, we see that we are victims of
white supremacy, but complicit in it as well. Our survival strategies and
resistance to white supremacy are set by the system of white
supremacy itself. What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of
white supremacy is that we are seduced with the prospect of being
able to participate in the other pillars. For example, all non-Native
peoples are promised the ability to join in the colonial project of
settling indigenous lands. All non-Black people are promised that if
they comply, they will not be at the bottom of the racial hierarchy. And
Black, Native, Latino, and Asian peoples are promised that they will
economically and politically advance if they join US wars to spread
“democracy.” Thus, people of color organizing must be premised on
making strategic alliances with each other, based on where we are
situated within the larger political economy. Thus, for example, Native
peoples who are organizing against the colonial and genocidal
practiced committed by the US government will be more effective in
their struggle if they also organized against US militarism, particularly
the military recruitment of indigenous peoples to support US imperial
wars. If we try to end US colonial practices at home, but support US
empire by joining the military, we are strengthening the state’s ability
to carry out genocidal policies against people of color here and all over
the world.
Our organizing can also reflect anti-Black racism. Recently, with the
outgrowth of “multiculturalism” there have been calls to “go beyond
the black/white binary” and include other communities of color in our
analysis as represented in the third scenario. There are a number of
flaws with this analysis. First, it replaces an analysis of white
supremacy with a politics of multicultural representation; if we just
include more people, then our practice will be less racist. Not true. This
model does not address the nuanced structure of white supremacy,
such as through these distinct logics of slavery, genocide, and
Orientalism. Second, it obscures the centrality of the slavery logic in
the system of white supremacy, which is based on a black/white
binary. The black/white binary is not the only binary which
characterizes white supremacy, but it is still a central one that we
cannot “go beyond” in our racial justice organizing efforts.
If we do not look at how the logic of slaveability inflects our society and
our thinking, it will be evident in our work as well. For example, other
communities of color often appropriate the cultural work and
organizing strategies of African American civil rights or Black Power
movements without corresponding assumptions that we should also be
in solidarity with Black communities. We assume that this work is the
common “property” of all oppressed groups, and we can appropriate it
without being accountable.
Conclusion
Women of color-centered organizing points to the centrality of gender
politics within antiracist, anticolonial struggles. Unfortunately, in our
efforts to organize against white, Christian America, racial justice
struggles often articulate an equally heteropatriarchal racial
nationalism. This model of organizing either hopes to assimilate into
white America, or to replicate it within an equally hierarchical and
oppressive racial nationalism in which the elites of the community rule
everyone else. Such struggles often call on the importance of
preserving the “Black family” or the “Native family” as the bulwark of
this nationalist project, the family being conceived of in capitalist and
heteropatriarchal terms. The response is often increased homophobia,
with lesbian and gay community members construed as “threats” to
the family. But, perhaps we should challenge the “concept” of the
family itself. Perhaps, instead, we can reconstitute alternative ways of
living together in which “families” are not seen as islands on their own.
Certainly, indigenous communities were not ordered on the basis of a
nuclear family structure—is the result of colonialism, not the antidote
to it.
I'm ready to toss in the towel. When all is said and done, it really is all
too much the white left. In far too many quarters, identifying with
progressive politics is perfectly compatible with reliance on racial
shorthand and, therefore, with the disposition to view Afro-American
life as simultaneously opaque to those outside it (thus the need for
black interpreters and line-bearers) and smoothly organic (with
exceptions made for the odd, inauthentic "sellout" leaders).
Perhaps I am finally giving in to this view because I'm old and tired.
Perhaps it's the result of attrition. Mostly, though, it seems that the
farther the memory-much less the actuality-of real political movements
recedes on the horizon, the worse this problem has become. I confess
that it is quite dispiriting. It also makes the issue of blacks' role in the
left a matter for real concern; more and more that role seems to be in
a line stretching back at least to Melville's Queequeg, that is, to put
whites in touch with their "deeper humanity."
The key problem is that whites on the left don't want to confront
complexity, tension, and ambivalence in black politics. In general, they
simply do not see political differences among black people. They do
not see that blacks are linked to social, political, and economic
institutions in a variety of different ways, and that those different links,
and the networks that flow from them, shape interests and ideological
perception no less, and no less subtly, than among whites.
This places a premium on articulate black people who will talk to the
left. Whites tend to presume their inability-or tend not to want to
expend the effort-to make critical judgments that might second-guess
their designated black voices of authenticity, and therefore do not
attend closely to the latter's substantive arguments. The result is that
these "authentic" voices are treated mainly as personalities-without
much regard to the political implications of the stances they project.
After black Americans fought from the moment of Emancipation for the
right to vote, then for two-thirds of the next century against Jim Crow
disfranchisement, it's incredible to hear the left's black stars routinely
and blithely dismiss the ability to elect leaders and participate in
shaping public institutions as less genuine than religious expression as
a form of black political engagement.
This view's currency reflects the fact that several of its proponents- like
West and Dyson-are ministers and thus propagandists for the church.
But it floats on whites' inclination to see black Americans as spiritual
folk, huddled organically around the camp meeting, communing with
the racial essence through faith in things unseen.
That might seem harsh, but what else would explain the apparent
absence of concern about church/state separation when West, Dyson,
and others rhapsodize about religion as the basis of genuinely black
political experience? Moreover, the effort to associate black legitimacy
with the church is especially problematic now, when reactionary forces
among black Americans are gaining steam precisely through church-
based initiatives and jeremiads on the theme of moral crisis. These
forces-in which church leaders are prominent-actively propagate moral
and police repression as alternatives to humane social policy; calls for
driving young people into churches, and jail if church fails, substitute
for calls for job programs and decent educational opportunity.
These are concerns that do not arise either in the patter of the left's
black line-bearers or in response to them. They should be at a
minimum, topics for strategic discussion, particularly in an otherwise
rigorously secular left.
They also reduce to a discourse on how white people think about black
people and how black people supposedly feel about it, buttressing a
suspicion that this is all most whites care much about anyway, when it
comes to deciphering what's up with black Americans.
So what can be done? Is there any useful way out of this situation I've
described? The reflex is to layout a detailed way of thinking about
black people and politics. Until recently, I'd certainly have acted on
that reflex. Now all it seems sensible to say is that the most important
warrants are: (1) to insist on focusing discussion of black politics
concretely, in relation to government, public policy, and political
economy and (2) to presume that political dynamics operating among
blacks are not totally alien, that is, they are understandable without
the need for special native interpreters.
Beyond that we'll just have to wait and see what happens, won't we?
Glen Ford, “Race and National Liberation Under
Obama”
I’m here to talk about race and national liberation under Obama. It’s
quite clear that there is a general understanding here that liberation
and progressive movements of all kinds have suffered a paralytic
effect under this Obama administration. I’m not going to directly
address that paralysis in other people’s communities, I’m going to
address what the Obama candidacy and now presidency has meant to
Black America—the paralysis that set in along traditionally active
elements of the Black community.
I’d like to give an example. I love this little factoid that comes out of
polling. In February of 2003, about five or six weeks before the
invasion of Iraq, the Zogby organization conducted a poll. Zogby is
always very good about breaking it down by race. They asked the
question—it was very clear at this point in history that the US was
going to invade Iraq, so the question was: “Would you favor an
invasion of Iraq if it would result in the death of thousands of Iraqi
civilians?”
A big, strong majority of white males said, “Yes! Let’s do it, I don’t care
about thousands of dead, innocent, civilian Iraqi men, women, and
children.” More than a third of white women said, “Sure, go ahead,
that’s the price we—they—got to pay.” About the same percentage of
Latinos said “Go ahead on with the invasion,” regardless of the
consequences to Iraqi men, women and children out of uniform. Seven
percent—seven percent!—of African-Americans gave the thumbs up for
the invasion if that were going to be the price that Iraqis paid for the
invasion. If you know anything about polling, seven percent is
negligible—that’s just like, people who ask, “What did you say?” See
what I’m saying? This means there was near unanimity in the Black
community that the Iraqi people should not be done such harm by the
American military machine.
I’ll never forget that statistic, I think it goes to the heart of the
tendency, that part of the ancient current that exists in Black America.
That gave actual, numerical quantity to that ancient tendency. This
tendency also calls for transformation of US society. That sometimes
means separation from white society and sometimes it does not. But it
does call for a transformation of white society in the United States,
because even separation means transformation. Then there’s the other
current. There are two main currents that have always existed in Black
society, including before emancipation. That other current demands
Black elevation, and Black recognition, under an otherwise still existing
status quo of American society. It does not demand transformation of
society except in terms of internal Black upward mobility. And it
worships Black faces in high places. That is the main manifestation of
it.
I’m going to add a word of caution here. That tendency is not strictly
integrationist, it is not necessarily assimilationist. In fact, both these
tendencies—the self-determinationist tendency and the Black upward
mobility tendency—are infused in a general framework of Black
nationalism or Black peoplehood. Because the fact of the matter is that
Black people are, at root, nationalist. And that is why the struggle
within the Black community—whether you are talking about this
elevationist, upward mobility tendency or some sort of
transformational principle—the struggle is always within the group.
And the argument is always, “What’s good for Black people?” See, that
root is a nationalist framework. Nationalist terms of reference. So we
can’t talk about a “nationalist tendency” and an “integrationist
tendency.” That doesn’t make much sense in the real world.
Now, both of those tendencies are warring, of course. But they exist
within not only distinct political movements in the history of Black
people, and not just within discreet political personalities, historical
personalities among Black people. Let’s talk about WEB DuBois—we’ll
see what looks like great vacillations over a career. It’s not so hard and
fast as that. Because the fact of the matter is that these two currents
exist within almost every Black individual, and they are warring with
each other. And people go back and forth. These are real, real
tendencies within basically every Black American. This must be
understood to understand why it seems that we vacillate and go
between... how can people who call themselves revolutionaries, as we
saw in this Obama adventure, that is still unfolding—people can call
themselves revolutionaries and be Obama-ites at the same time? Yes
they can! Because these are warring tendencies within the same
individuals.
So I wanted to get that groundwork out of the way and bring us to the
near history. Another way to look at the Obama candidacy is to take a
look at what corporate America has been doing in terms of its strategy
to infiltrate, negate, somehow put its mark on, Black political activity.
Because Black people are central to what goes on in the United States.
Not just because we are clustered in the cities. But because, we are
central to what America is. And other people are taking cues to what
we do, as well. So they figured out, “We have to do something about
these Black people, we can no longer just treat them as invisible
people, as we could in the previous era”—before Civil Rights, before we
stood up, before Black Power. So you’re going to have to deal with
them some kind of way.
And racist folk in the corporate structure wrestled with themselves for
a very long time. In fact they gave us a respite after the Civil Rights
and Black Power movements where they didn’t mess with us and they
carried out some very stupid and ineffectual strategies which gave us
some breathing space which I wish we had taken advantage of—but,
shit, that’s old man talk. It did not happen. In the post-Civil Rights era,
the Republican Party—which is the most coherent mouthpiece for
corporate capital, not only one, the Democrats are too, but the
Republicans do it in a distilled form that we can recognize easily—at
first, they looked to create some kind of counter to the self-
determinationist tendency which had become paramount in Black
America in the Black Power movement by creating what one might call
a comprador class: a compliant class.
During the Nixon era, all these government agencies that promoted
Black business were a part of that. That was a political program. It was
expected that these Black businessmen would become Republicans. So
the corporate right at that time, working through the Republican Party,
tried to revive Black Republicanism. It did not take. It could not take.
Because the last Black person elected to congress from a Black
congressional district was in 1935 and that was Oscar De Priest. There
has not been a Black Republican from a Black congressional district
since then. So, Black Republicanism was dead but they didn’t quite
understand that, so they kept on beating that dead horse for awhile.
When they saw that that wouldn’t work, they decided maybe they
could influence Black folks by giving up chairs and all kinds of funding
to Black right-wing academics. So we saw the rise of Thomas Sowell
and Glenn Loury and a whole coterie of them. They put them on the
speaking circuits, and the American Enterprise Institute got them on
television all over, and... nothing. Nothing happened in Black America.
White folks have a lot to say: “Ah, well, Glenn Loury says...” or
“Thomas Sowell said...”—but it had absolutely no impact on the
internal dynamics of Black America. So then they said, “Well, damn,
what can we do with these people?” Aside from the general policy of
mass Black incarceration. But what could they do at that level of
politics?
Cory Booker was part of the initial meeting, I believe it was in 1998,
the formative meeting of the Black Alliance for Educational Options, in
Milwaukee. He became then their shining star. He was introduced to
the world by the Manhattan Institute. The Manhattan Institute is that
part of the vast capitalist conspiracy where the division of labor calls
for them to do media, because they are in New York. So Cory had his
coming-out party at the Manhattan Institute’s media-centered
luncheons.
That was in 2002 and that was the year of the great jump-off when
corporate America, through their various organizations, decided that
they were going to penetrate the Democratic Party in the ghetto. They
had never done that before. There were corrupt politicians, there
always have been, but nobody was toeing the line, who were direct
surrogates for the corporate line—a line that was concocted, was
invented by the Bradley Foundation. So in 2002 Cory Booker almost
won in Newark, but Artur Davis won, taking a congressional seat from
Earl Hilliard, in Alabama. The same formula, came with gobs of money,
out of nowhere and swept Earl Hilliard away. Then, a couple of months
later, Denise Majette, came from nowhere, with three times the money
that Cynthia McKinney had, and swept her out of her congressional
seat in Atlanta. And all of a sudden, this corporate plan, this strategy
which had been birthed in Milwaukee was now bearing fruit. And they
had their little caucus in the Congressional Black Caucus. The
Congressional Black Caucus has not come out with a coherent
progressive position since because they always acted on consensus.
Once those two—and others who were to follow—infested the caucus,
there could be no consensus. So, just in 2002, they successfully
neutralized the Congressional Black Caucus. They’ve never been able
to say since that they are the conscience of the congress because of
the events of 2002.
It said, “What about the Black community, Obama?” That’s really damn
simple. And they didn’t even shout it. But it stood out in this strange
and weird campaign where Black folks, for the first time in my memory
had made no noise at all and not tried to impact on the dialog at all
during this whole display. It flustered Obama because he wasn’t used
to being challenged. He stuttered and stumbled and lied but he was
clearly set off of his stride.
But the elements that were there were significant. Larry Hamm from
the People’s Organization for Progress in Newark, New Jersey. And that
is the grassroots organization with membership in northern New
Jersey. If you’re not shaking with Larry Hamm, nothing’s shaking, all
right? And because it’s grassroots, not a lot of people like those in this
room—please, I’m not being presumptuous, who talk things out and
share principles that verge on socialism, sometimes—Larry Hamm is in
charge of an organization of regular folk who respond to day-to-day
concerns and are not immersed in all the doctrine—and therefore,
however, are quite vulnerable to the “Black faces in high places”
appeal.
But he fought for the bus to come down from Newark, to make this
statement, to plant the flag of opposition to this president. That was a
very brave thing for him to do and it shows that the cracks are
widening in what seemed to be near unanimous support for Barack
Obama. What seemed to be a near triumph of that tendency that is
just for Black elevation and some modicum of respect and to see Black
faces in high places, over the principles and actual necessities of Black
life.
And here’s Charles Barron, making one of the most dynamic speeches.
Clearly splitting with members of the December 12 Movement, which is
one of the big activist groups here in New York, on this subject. That is,
putting his political capital on the line. Because he sees that it is
necessary. I don’t see him just as a weathervane trying to see which
way the wind is blowing. These guys are actually putting their political
capital at risk—people with real organizations, who are going blow to
blow with their own constituency. Saying that it is necessary that we
split with this Obama man.
So I believe that we are seeing cracks that will get wider and wider as
the crises become more frequent and deeper. As the treachery
becomes more and more apparent. I don’t think that Black America is
going to be the backwater that it was—and shamefully so!—in 2008. I
believe we’re coming out. We’re getting over this high, this rush.
Please forgive us! [laughs] It was a high, it was a rush, and people are
coming back to their senses. And there is great political space being
created to organize the way we used to do, under these new
circumstances.
Robert L Allen, “The Social Context of
Black Power”
In the summer of 1966 two events occurred which were to have
momentous impact on the black liberation movement. Superficially
they appeared unrelated, but both were responses to the oppression of
black people in the United States and, in the dialectic of history, they
were to become deeply intertwined. The setting for the first event was
a hot summer day in Mississippi. James Meredith, the first black man to
graduate from the University of Mississippi, had been making his
famous "march against fear" through his home state. Joining the march
were FBI men, newspaper reporters and photographers, assorted well-
wishers, and Stokely Carmichael. It was June.
The news media pounced upon this new slogan. They treated it as a
hot item and flashed the chant across the country, much to the
consternation of a nervous American public. At that time nobody
outside of a handful of people in SNCC could give a rational
explanation of what black power meant. But many black people who
heard the new expression grasped its essence easily. It related directly
to their experience, their lack of power. On the other hand, the mass
mind of white America was gripped with fear and horror at the thought
that blackness and power could be conjoined.
What the Urban League delegates and the American public did not
know was that the gigantic Ford Foundation, which already had
fashioned for itself a vanguard role in the neocolonial penetration of
the Third World, was on the eve of attempting a similar penetration of
the black militant movement. This was the hidden relationship
between black power chants in Mississippi and the August meeting in
the City of Brotherly Love. Both events represented responses,
although with totally different objectives, to the crisis that trapped the
black population and to the by then obvious fact that the formal gains
won by the civil rights movement had not solved the problem of
oppression of the black nation.
(2)
But not all was sweetness and light on that noteworthy day. There was
dissent and grumbling in the wings. John Lewis, then chairman of
SNCC, had written a militant speech not in keeping with the
harmonious feelings scheduled to be put on public display in the
capital. The speech was censored by march organizers. The
uncensored version read in part:
Lewis was asking pertinent questions, but these were "outside" the
sphere of civil rights and, therefore, were not appropriate areas for
federal intervention. The Civil Rights Law that was eventually passed in
1964 required, at least on paper, the ending of racial discrimination in
voting procedures, certain areas of public accommodation and public
facilities, and some places of employment. It also provided for public
school desegregation. The catch, in this and in the 1965 Voting Rights
Act, was in enforcement. Blacks who believed that their civil rights had
been infringed upon were required to go through lengthy and
elaborate procedures to secure redress. Even so, enforcement was
slow, sporadic, and largely ineffective. Federal registrars were sent in,
1
Joanne Grant (ed.), Black Protest (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett
Publications, Inc., 1968), p. 375.
occasionally. Some of the worst areas they never reached. The net
result of this procrastination was that black people and their leaders
were educated to the fact that legislation means nothing without
effective enforcement. And enforcement, particularly when legislation
flies in the face of social convention or established interests, depends
on power. The federal government had the power, but it needed the
support of the southern reactionaries who chaired major committees in
the Senate and House. Hence, civil rights laws became merely more
testimony to the truism that American democracy is subservient to the
economic and political interests of those who hold power.
The civil rights movement failed not only because of these setbacks
but also because even the small victories it won benefited mainly the
black middle class, not the bulk of the black poor. Thus blacks who
were "qualified" could get jobs. If there were no jobs in industry, there
were frequently openings in the anti-poverty programs for those with
suitable credentials. After desegregation laws were passed, more
affluent blacks could dine at downtown restaurants or take in shows at
previously segregated theaters. Those who had the money and the
stomach for a fight could even buy homes in formerly all-white
2
The fact that four years later the challengers were seated at the Chicago
convention was more indicative of the growing militance of the Afro-American
movement than suggestive of any change of heart on the part of national
Democrats. In 1964 the MFDP was itself a militant movement, but by 1968,
national Democrats viewed the seating of a then comparatively moderate
MFDP as a means of discrediting black militants and of proffering to black
people the frail hope that electoral politics-under the protective wing of the
Democratic party was still a viable means for effecting social change.
suburbs.
The explosion began in 1964 with the Harlem rebellion and fourteen
other urban revolts. City after city was shaken as the conflagration
spread across the country in subsequent "long hot summers." The
rebellions were almost entirely spontaneous and unorganized
eruptions, but they had an underlying drive, a basic logic: Most of the
attacks and looting were directed against the property of white
merchants who exploit the black community. This was the pattern in
Harlem and a year later in the Los Angeles revolt. Black people were in
a sense "reclaiming" the merchandise which had been stolen from
them in the form of underpaid labor and exploitative prices.
Malcolm, the ideological father of the black power movement and one
man to whom Harlem's angry masses looked for new leadership, was
killed just fifty weeks after he officially broke with the Nation of Islam-
the Black Muslims. During that last year of his life Malcolm made two
trips to Africa and the Middle East which seriously influenced his
thinking. He began carefully to re-evaluate the social and political
ideas which he had accepted while in the Muslims. He set up the
Organization of Afro-American Unity-patterned after the Organization
of African Unity-which he hoped would implement his new ideas and
launch a decisive attack on the problems confronting blacks in
America. Assassins' bullets cut down this new beginning before it bore
fruit.
Malcolm was an activist, and this was· at the root of his split with
Muhammad. In the 19608 the Muslims were increasingly charged by
black militants with talking tough but never doing anything. The
freedom movement was gaining momentum, and it was no longer
enough simply to denounce "white devils." The Muslims abstained from
any form of political or social activism, and Malcolm was beginning to
have his doubts about the wisdom of this policy.
But such ideas clashed with the aims of Muhammad and his
lieutenants. Malcolm was suspended from the Muslims in December
1963, allegedly for his highly publicized "chickens coming home to
roost" remark about President Kennedy's assassination. It soon
became clear, however, that the suspension was to be of indefinite
duration and that he was no longer welcome among Muslims. The
following March, Malcolm announced that he was breaking completely
with Muhammad. He said that he was willing to plunge into the civil
rights struggle around the country because every local campaign "can
only heighten the political consciousness of the Negroes .... "4
He realized the need for unity among black people if they were
effectively to attack racism and exploitation in America. He called
himself a disciple of black nationalism, which he carefully defined as
the effort of blacks to organize a movement of their own to fight for
freedom, justice, and equality. The kernel of black nationalism, he said,
was the idea that black people should control the economy, politics,
and social institutions of their own communities. Thus he identified
black nationalism with the general concept of self-determination.
3
The Autobiography of Malcolm X (New York: Grove Press,
1965), p. 293.
4
Quoted in George Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X
(New York: Merit Publishers, 1967), p. 19.
After the split Malcolm no longer endorsed utopian separatism: the
doctrine that blacks should return to Africa or devote their efforts to
setting up a black state in the United States. He still rejected
integrationism, as either phony tokenism or an attempt to assimilate
blacks into a decadent white society. Unlike the Muslims, who
attributed the cause of black oppression to the evil of the white race,
Malcolm realized that it was in the structure of society to which one
could trace, not only the roots of black people's misery, but also the
genesis of white racism itself. In a speech in May 1964, Malcolm
argued:
5
Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X, p. 33.
registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-
American community an independent voter; we propose to support
and/or organize political clubs, to run independent candidates for
office, and to support any Afro-American already in office who answers
to and is responsible to the Afro-American community."6 In the
economic sphere the OAAU merely pledged that it would "wage an
unrelenting struggle" against economic exploitation of all forms.
So today, when the black man starts reaching out for what
America says are his rights, the black man feels that he is within
his rights-when he becomes the victim of brutality by those who
are depriving him of his rights to do whatever is necessary to
protect himself. An example of this was taking place last night at
this same time in Cleveland, where the police were putting water
hoses on our people there and also throwing tear gas at them-
and they met a hail of stones, a hail of rocks, a hail of bricks. A
couple of weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida, a young teen-age
Negro was throwing Molotov cocktails. Well, Negroes didn't do
this ten years ago. But what you should learn from this is that
they are waking up. It was stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails
today; it will be hand grenades tomorrow and whatever else is
available the next day. . . There are 22 million African-Americans
who are ready to fight for independence right here. . . I don't
mean any nonviolent fight, or turn-the-other-cheek fight. Those
days are over. Those days are gone.7
6
Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X, p. 109.
7
George Breitman (ed.), Malcolm X Speaks (New York: Grove Press, Inc.,
1965), p. 49.
8
Breitman, p. 50.
revolution. But strangely, at the end of this speech, he seemed to
retreat from the position he had taken throughout his talk. "America,"
he said, "is the first country on this earth that can actually have a
bloodless revolution." Why did he think this was so? "Because the
Negro in this country holds the balance of power, and if the Negro in
this country were given what the Constitution says he is supposed to
have, the added power of the Negro in this country would sweep all of
the racists and the segregationists out of office. It would change the
entire political structure of the country.”9
This was clearly inconsistent with the major thrust of his speech.
Malcolm had no faith in the efficacy of political reform. Only a few
moments earlier he had pointed out that the black man "can see where
every maneuver that America has made, supposedly to solve [the
race] problem, has been nothing but political trickery and treachery of
the worst order." Malcolm apparently held ambivalent attitudes on the
question of violence. He advocated self-defense; yet he knew that no
revolution was made using the tactics of self-defense. He knew that
the black revolt held the potential of turning into a revolution and that
revolutions involve aggressive violence; yet he could conclude that
America might be the first country to experience a bloodless
revolution.
9
Breitman, Malcolm X Speaks, p. 57.
10
Breitman, The Last Year of Malcolm X, p. 32.
revolutionary forces outside the black communities could prevent mass
slaughter of the black population. He saw no such forces in evidence,
and therefore was forced to equivocate, tom between the seemingly
conflicting needs of racial survival and social revolution.
In any case, such an alliance was for the moment only a secondary
consideration; the first was the creation of black unity. Militant blacks,
he said, had to consolidate their own forces, work out their own
program and strategy, and build a strong movement before there
could be any meaningful move toward an alliance with whites. The
immediate goal of white militants, Malcolm thought, should be to build
a viable movement within white communities. Any linkup that might
then occur would be between equals.
It was in Africa in the last year of his life that he saw the best and most
numerous allies of American blacks. He was implacably opposed to the
thesis that since black people are only a minority in this country, they
should accept the leadership of white liberals. Malcolm argued that
black people should identify with the majority of the world's oppressed
and downtrodden peoples and elevate the black freedom struggle to
the level of an international struggle for human rights.
Malcolm believed that the people of Africa, Asia, and Latin America
were victims of "the international power structure," that U.S.
neocolonialism was the main weapon of this power structure, but that
the colonial revolt had shown the enemy to be invincible no longer.
International capitalism, he believed, was slowly being beaten back
and replaced with various kinds of socialisms. At an OAAU rally in
Harlem on December 20, 1964, less than a month after his last return
from Africa, Malcolm said:
The New York Times reported that State Department officials said that
if "Malcolm succeeded in convincing just one African government to
bring up the charge at the United Nations, the United States
government would be faced with a touchy problem." The newspaper
report said the United States would find itself in the same category as
South Africa in a debate before the world body.
He did not live to see his plan come to fruition. On the morning of
February 13, 1965, his home was fire-bombed by professionals. He and
his family barely escaped injury. Malcolm at first blamed the Muslims,
but he soon suspected that other parties were at work. As he said, he
knew intimately the Muslims' capabilities and limitations. The following
Sunday the "other parties" were more successful. Malcolm was shot to
death at a meeting in New York.14
14
Malcolm's fears that he might be assassinated for political reasons were
not the result of paranoia. See, for example, Eric Norden's article in the
February 1967 issue of The Realist.
Labor party, on "criminal anarchy" charges for his role in the Harlem
rebellion, and now climaxed in the removal of yet another militant
black leader: It was this continuing decimation of militant black
leadership that posed the real danger, not a bloodbath triggered by
warring blacks.
Malcolm X died, but not his ideas. One of the most important of these
was how the struggle of blacks in this country was bound up with the
outcome of revolutionary struggles in the Third World. This message
was especially timely because it was at the end of 1964 and beginning
of 1965 that the United States started its massive buildup in Vietnam,
and Malcolm was one of the first black leaders to stand in opposition.
He did so not because he was a pacifist or morally outraged. He
opposed the war out of a sense of solidarity with the Vietnamese
liberation fighters. Malcolm had great admiration for the courage of the
Vietnamese guerrillas: "Little rice farmers, peasants, with a rifle-up
against all the highly-mechanized weapons of warfare-jets, napalm,
battleships, everything else, and they can't put those rice farmers back
where they want them. Somebody's waking up." Implicit in Malcolm's
admiration was his recognition of a principle which is fundamental to
guerrilla struggles everywhere: namely, that the revolutionary spirit of
the people is more effective than the enemy's technology.
Within the context of the moderate civil rights movement which still
existed at that time, these were advanced arguments. The latter two
arguments particularly were soon to be sharpened and used by black
militants in their attacks on government policy.
15
17 Freedomways, Vol. 5, No.4.
(3)
Starting with the "basic fact that black Americans have two problems:
they are poor and they are black," Carmichael wrote that SNCC,
"almost from its beginning," sought to develop a program aimed at
winning political power for impoverished southern blacks. He did not
foresee, however, that the growing militancy of the black middle class
would lead that class also to demand political power. But political for
the black bourgeoisie, the black elite, is not the same as political
power for the black poor, the bulk of the black population. It is quite
possible for this elite group to achieve a measure of political and
economic power within the American capitalist system, but this does
not necessarily imply any change for the black majority. Just as the
civil rights movement made important gains for the middle class but
left the poor largely untouched, there
is no intrinsic reason to think a bourgeois black power movement will
not follow a similar course. This is the central issue which later was to
split the black power movement into moderate and militant factions,
with the Congress of Racial Equality being a leading organization
among the former while SNCC and the Black Panthers took the lead
among the militants.
A year later Carmichael would use virtually the same definition of black
power in the book which he co-authored on the subject. In it, however,
he made it explicit that he thought of black power as only another form
of traditional ethnic group politics. "The concept of Black Power rests
on a fundamental premise: Be/ore a group can enter the open society,
it must first close ranks. By this we mean that group solidarity is
necessary before a group can operate effectively from a bargaining
position of strength in a pluralistic society.”16
This belief that black people are much like other ethnic groups in
America lies at the heart of the reformist tendency in black
nationalism. In his book, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Harold
Cruse argues that if America could only be forced to face the fact that
competing ethnic groups are its basic social reality, then a kind of
"democratic cultural pluralism" could be established resulting in
genuine black equality. Nathan Wright, chairman of the 1967 Newark
Black Power Conference, expressed a similar view in his book, Black
Power and Urban Unrest. Wright urged black people to band together
as a group to seek entry into the American mainstream. For example,
he called for organized efforts by blacks "to seek executive positions in
16
Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hanrilton, Black Power: The Politics of
Liberation in America (New York: Random House, 1967), p. 44.
corporations, bishoprics, deanships of cathedrals, superintendencies of
schools, and high-management positions in banks, stores, investment
houses, legal firms, civic and government agencies and factories."17
It would have made sense at the close of the Civil War to plan for the
assimilation of black people as a group into the American mainstream.
Racism made this impossible. Now, as racism begins to crumble, the
requirements of an advanced technological economy increasingly
exclude black workers from the active labor force. Hence racism, the
stepchild of slavery, prevented black people from following in the
footsteps of other ethnic groups.
17
Nathan Wright, Jr., Black Power and Urban Unrest (New York: Hawthorn,
1967), p. 43.
larger national structure is one of the prime requirements for the
smooth functioning of a complex and advanced society. A
consequence of this process is that city politics can no longer be a
free-for-all scramble responsive to the ethnic group (or groups) which
can muster the most votes. Instead, the city government itself
becomes a mechanism for the realization of national priorities-and this
necessarily tends to eliminate a major
channel for the anticipated advancement of black people as an ethnic
group.18
In the United States force is available to the ruling structure in the form
of police and army. These forces may be deployed in the name of
"freedom," "law and order," or "the American way." This rhetoric is
based partly on popular ideas about the nature of American society
and partly on the social mythology of "private property rights." The
defense of which is the most socially important ultimate-though not
always immediate-justification for the use of force. Nearly all
Americans believe, because they have been taught from childhood to
believe, that those who are designated as "owners" have an inherent
and inalienable right to use in any manner they alone see fit that which
is termed "property."19
That political democracy in the U.S. has not been totally destroyed is
evident in the passage of reform measures and laws aimed at curbing
the power of various economic interests. But at the state and national
levels particularly, the country's legislative machinery has allied itself-
through the apparatus of the Democratic and Republican parties-with
one wing or another of the economic establishment. As this
establishment is not yet monolithic there is room within its ranks for
considerable dissension. conflict and change. Consequently, it is open
to some outside pressure for reform, but it is not open to an attack on
its own position of power nor will it knowingly tolerate an effective
challenge to the social fiction on which that power is predicated.
20
Transaction, May 1968.
21
Julius Lester, Look Out, Whitey! (New York: Dial Press, 1968). p. 138.
alternatives."22
(4)
Over the years the organization's membership grew from the initial
handful of black and white activists. Like SNCC, CORE was a middle-
class organization. It differed from SNCC in that SNCC members, being
younger, were not yet committed to middle-class jobs or middle-class
lifestyles. It was, therefore, easier for SNCC members to identify with
22
Floyd B. Barbour (ed.) , The Black Power Revolt (Boston: Porter Sargent,
1968), p. 141.
the impoverished black majority. CORE differed from the NAACP in that
the latter is wealthier, better established, and more solidly bourgeois.
The NAACP aims at reforming certain aspects of a system whose
assumptions it shares. It carries out these reformist efforts through the
socially accepted channels of the ballot box, court cases, and
legislative lobbying. CORE, on the other hand, while being a more
militant and less affluent organization than the NAACP, still does not
reject the basic ideological assumptions of American society, although
it may question them. CORE employed less orthodox and more militant
methods of reform. It used direct-action techniques in an effort to bring
pressure on institutions it sought to change. As some observers have
noted: "At a given point, after pressure from outside the system has
been successful, it is possible for the less privileged reformist group to
be allowed to work inside the system."23
23
Fitch and Oppenheimer, Ghana, p. 27.
organizing rent strikes.
The government could not do this job, Farmer asserted, because of its
built-in resistance to fundamental change. "We can rely upon none but
ourselves as a catalyst in the development of the potential power of
the black community in its own behalf and in behalf of the nation."
The man who chaired this convention was Floyd McKissick, then
national chairman. The following year, in March, McKissick was named
to replace Farmer as national director. McKissick was born in Asheville,
North Carolina, in 1922. He graduated from Morehouse College in
Atlanta, one of the great training institutions for the black bourgeoisie,
and then went on to the University of North Carolina Law School where
he took a law degree. McKissick mixed civil rights activity with his legal
career, and, beginning in 1960, he became one of the leaders of the
sit-in movement in North Carolina.
(5)
By the time SNCC and CORE raised the cry of black power, the
sophisticated, white establishment already had begun to sketch the
general outlines of its response to the new, black militancy. It was not
so much the specific slogan of black power that motivated this
response; rather it was prompted by the same domestic conditions
that underlay the rise of black militancy: The failure of the civil rights
movement to alleviate the continuing impoverishment of the black
communities and the consequent urban outbreaks.
Significantly, Bundy also hinted that the political arena was to assume
greater importance in the black struggle. "We know . . . that political
influence brings political results," he told the group. He did not say,
however, that the Foundation would soon play an indirect part in
electing Carl Stokes as the first Negro mayor of Cleveland.
As for justice, Bundy simply said that it should be given top priority.
Finally, Bundy came to the heart of what he wanted to say. He told the
Urban League group that there are certain interlocking institutions
which bind blacks and whites together. One of the most important of
these is the city, and "the quality of our cities is inescapably the
business of all of us. Many whites recognize that no one can run the
American city by black power alone," the reason being, he suggested
at a later point, that urban black majorities would still be faced with
white majorities in state houses and the U. S. Congress. But if the
blacks bum the cities, then, he stated, it would be the white man's
fault and, importantly, "the white man's companies will have to take
the losses." White America is not so stupid as not to comprehend this
elemental fact, Bundy assured the Urban Leaguers. Something would
be done about the urban problem. "Massive help" would be given to
the ghettos, and the Ford Foundation would take the lead in organizing
the campaign.
Thus the Ford Foundation was on its way to becoming the most
important, though least publicized, organization manipulating the
militant black movement. Housed in an ultramodern headquarters
building on East Forty-third Street in New York, the Foundation is
deeply involved in financing and influencing almost all major protest
groups, including CORE, SCLC, the National Urban League, and the
NAACP. Working directly or indirectly through these organizations, as
well as other national and local groups, the Foundation hopes to
channel and control the black liberation movement and forestall future
urban revolts.
To come to the point, the Ford Foundation had shaped itself into one of
the most sophisticated instruments of American neocolonialism in
27
"American Foundations and the Common Welfare," by Benry T. Heald (Ford
Foundation pamphlet SRl9).
"underdeveloped nations," whether abroad or within the borders of this
country.
The world is not so simple, Bundy wrote, and "with John F. Kennedy we
enter a new age. Over and over he [Kennedy] insisted on the double
assertion of policies which stood in surface contradiction with each
other: resistance to tyranny and relentless pursuit of accommodation;
reinforcement of defense and new leadership for disarmament;
counter-insurgency and the Peace Corps; openings to the left, but no
closed doors to the reasonable right; an Alliance for Progress and
unremitting opposition to Castro; in sum, the olive branch and the
arrows."29
28
Vol. 45, No.2.
29
Bundy, p. 192
[cut section about Black Panther Party and 10-point program]