 |
| Stokely Carmichael |
We understand that a
capitalist system automatically contains within itself racism, whether by
design or not. Capitalism and racism seem to go hand in hand. The struggle for
Black Power in the US, and certainly the world, is the struggle to free these
colonies from external domination. But we do not seek merely to create
communities where, in place of white rulers, black rulers control the lives of
black masses, and where black money goes into a few black pockets. We want to
see it go into the communal pocket. The society we seek to build among black
people is not an oppressive capitalist society. Capitalism, by its very nature,
cannot create structures free from exploitation.
The question may be
asked, how does the struggle to free these internal colonies relate to the
struggle against imperialism all around the world? We realistically survey our
numbers and know that it is not possible for black people to take over the
whole country militarily. In a highly industrialized nation the struggle is
different. The heart of production and the heart of trade is in the cities. We
are in the cities. We can become, and are becoming, a disruptive force in the
flow of services, goods and capital. While we disrupt internally and aim for
the eye of the octopus, we are hoping that our brothers are disrupting
externally to sever the tentacles of the US.
That’s very important,
because Newark, New Jersey, is where Engelhart has his capital – and for the
last five days he couldn’t do any work. Good move for the Africans. You know
who Engelhart is, don’t you – you don’t – you should read about South Africa,
he controls most of it, along with Rockefeller, the liberal from the US.
It is sometimes said that
the African-American movement in the US does not understand the true nature of
the struggle in the world today; that the movement is involved in fighting only
racial discrimination, and only with the weapon on non-violence. It used to be.
As you know, the Black Power movement which SNCC initiated moved away from the
movement for integration. This was not only because the movement’s goals were
middle class – such as job opportunities for college graduates, equal public
facilities – and not only because white Americans’ concept of integration was
based on the assumption that there was nothing of value in the black community
and that little of value wouldl ever come from the black community – and that’s
very important, because the West doesn’t understand its own racism when they
talk about integration. When they talk about integration, they talk about
accepting black people – isn’t that ridiculous? I have to talk about whether or
not I want to accept them, and they’re never willing to talk about that,
because they know they’ll come up losing. So that integration is absolutely
absurd unless you can talk about it on a two-way streak, where black people sit
down and decide about integration. That means if you’re really going to talk
about integration, you don’t talk about black people moving into white
neighbourhoods, you talk about white people moving into black neighbourhoods.
Because of the
middle-class orientation of the integration movement, and because of its
subconscious racism, and because of its non-violent approach, it has never been
able to involve the black proletariat. It could never attract and hold the
young bloods who clearly understood the savagery of white America, and who were
ready to meet it with armed resistance. It is the young bloods who contain
especially the hatred Che Guevara speaks of when he says, and I quote:
Hatred as an element of struggle, relentless hatred of the enemy that impels us over and beyond the natural limitations of man, and transforms us into effective, violent, selected and cold killing machines.
The Black Power movement
has been the catalyst for the bringing together of these young bloods – the
real revolutionary proletariat, ready to fight by any means necessary for the
liberation of our people.
The Black Power movement
in the US is exposing the extent of the racism and exploitation which permeates
all the institutions in the country. It has unique appeal to young black
students on campuses across the US. These students have been deluded by the
fiction in which America that if the black man would educate himself and behave
himself, he would be acceptable enough to leave the ranks of the oppressed and
have tea with the Queen. However, this year, when provoked by savage white
policemen, students on many campuses fought back, whereas before they had
accepted these incidents without rebellion. As students are a part of these
rebellions, they begin to acquire a resistance-consciousness. They begin to
realize that white America might let a very few of them escape, one by one,
into the mainstream of a society, but as soon as blacks move in concert around
their blackness she will reply with the fury which reveals her true racist
nature.
It is necessary, then, to
understand that our analysis of the US and international capitalism is one that
begins in race. Colour and culture were, and are, key factors in our
oppression. Therefore our analysis of history and our economic analysis are
rooted in these concepts. Our historical analysis for example views the US as
being conceived in racism. Although the first settlers themselves were escaping
from oppression, and although their armed uprising against their mother country
was around the aggravation of colonialism, and their slogan was ‘no taxation
without representation’, the white European settlers could not extend their
lofty theories of democracy to the red men, whom they systematically
exterminated as they expanded into the territory of the country which belonged
to the red men. Indeed, in the same town in which the settlers set up their
model of government based on the theory of representative democracy, the first
slaves were brought from Africa. In the writings of the glorious Constitution,
guaranteeing ‘life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness’ and all that other
garbage, these were rights for white men only, for the black man was counted
only as three fifths of a person. If you read the US Constitution, you will see
that this clause is still in there to this very day – that the black man was
three fifths of a man.
It was because white
America needed cheap or free labour that she raped our African homeland of
millions of black people. Because we were black and considered inferior by
white Americans and Europeans, our enslavement was justified and rationalized
by the so-called white Christians, who attempted to explain their crimes by
spouting lies about civilizing the heathens, pagans, savages from Africa, whom
they portrayed as being ‘better off’ in the Americas than they were in their
homeland. These circumstances laid the systematic base and framework for the
racism which has become institutionalized in white American society.
