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Books by Stokely Carmichael/Kwame Ture
Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely
Carmichael (Kwame Ture) /
Black-Power:The Politics of Liberation
Stokely Speaks: From Black Power to Pan-Africanism
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Black
Power
By Stokely Carmichael
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 white 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 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 black 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. Color 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 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 labor that she raped our African homeland of millions of
black people. Because we were black and considered inferior by
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.
In our economic analysis, our interpretation
of Marx comes not only from his writing, but, as we see it, from
the relationship of capitalistic countries to people of color
around the world. Now I’m going to show what happens when
people in a white country in the West organize themselves when
they’re oppressed.
I want to use the Labor Movement in the US
because it’s always quoted around the world as the real
movement, or friend, of the black man, who is going to be able
to help him. This is true for all other little white countries
when the white workers organize—here’s how they get out of
the bind.
The Labor Movement of the US—while in the
beginning certainly some of their great leaders in the struggle
were against the absolute control of the economy by the
industrial lords—essentially fought only for money. And that
has been the fight of white workers in the West. The fight for
one thing—more money. Those few who had visions of extending
the fight for workers’ control of production never succeeded
in transmitting their entire vision to the rank and file. The
labor Movement found itself asking the industrial lords, not to
give up their control, but merely to pass out a few more of the
fruits of this control.
Thereby did the US anticipate the prophecy of
Marx, and avoided the inevitable class struggle within the
country by expanding into the Third World and exploiting the
resources and slave labor of people of color. Britain, France,
did the same thing. US capitalists never cut down on their
profits to the American working class, who lapped them up. The
American working class enjoys the fruits of the labors of the
Third World, and the bourgeoise is white western society.
And to show how that works—and not only how
it works just in terms of the bourgeoise—I’ve watched the
relationships of whites to whites who are communist, and whites
to non-whites whom they call communist. Now every time the US
wants to take somebody’s country, they get up and say
“Communists are invading them and terrorist guerilla warfare
is on the way, and we must protect democracy, so send thousands
of troops to Vietnam to kill the Communists.”
Italy is a white country. Over one third of
its population is communist. Why doesn’t the US invade Italy?
Tito is an acknowledged communist. The US gives him aid. Why
don’t they invade Tito’s country, if they really care about
stopping communism? The US is not kidding anybody. When they
want to take over somebody’s land who is non-white, they talk
about communist aggression—that’s what they did in Cuba, in
Santo Domingo, and it’s what they’re doing in Vietnam.
They’re always telling people how they’re going to stop them
from going communist.
And don’t talk about dictatorship. Franco
is perhaps the worst dictator in the world today, but the US
gives him aid.
So that it is clear it is not a question of
communist invasion; it’s really a question of being able to
take the countries they want most from the people, and the
countries they want most are obviously the non-white countries
because that is where the resources of the world today. That’s
where they have been for the last few centuries. And that’s
why white western society has to be there. . . .
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* *
The US knows about law and order, it doesn’t
know about justice. It is for white western society to talk about
law and order. It is for the Third World to talk about justice. .
. .
*
* *
We are working to increase the revolutionary
consciousness of black people in America to join with the Third
World. Whether or not violence is used is not decided by us, it is
decided by the white West. We are fighting a political warfare.
Politics is war without violence. War is politics with violence.
The white West will make the decision on how they want the
political war to be fought. We are not any longer going to bow our
heads to any white man. If he touches one black man in the US, he
is going to go to war with every black man in the US.
We are going to extend our fight
internationally and we are going to hook up with the Third World.
It is the only salvation—we are fighting to save our humanity.
We are indeed fighting to save the humanity of the world, which
the West has failed miserably in being able to preserve. And the
fight must be waged from the Third World. There will be new
speakers. They will be Che, they will be Mao, they will be Fanon.
You can have Rousseau, you can have Marx, you can even have the
great libertarian John Stuart Mill.
*
* *
Black Power, to us, means that black people see
themselves as a part of the new force, sometimes called the Third
World; that we see our struggle as closely related to liberation
struggles around the world. We must hook up with these struggles.
We must, for example, ask ourselves: when black people in Africa
begin to storm Johnnesburg, what will be the reaction of the US?
What will be the role of the West, and what will be the role of
black people living inside the US? It seems inevitable that the US
will move to protect its financial interests in South Africa,
which means protecting the white rule in South Africa, as England
has already done.
Black people in the US have the responsibility
to oppose, and if not oppose, certainly to neutralize the effort
by white America. This is but one example of many such situations
which have already arisen around the world; there are more to
come.
There is but one place for black Americans in
these struggles, and that is one the side of the Third World.
Now I want to draw two conclusions. I want to
give a quote from Fanon. Frantz Fanon in the Wretched of the Earth
puts forth clearly the reasons for this, and the relationships of
the concept called Black Power to the concept of a new force in
the world.
This is Fanon’s quote:
| Let us decide not to imitate Europe. Let us try
to create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of
bringing to triumphant birth. Two centuries ago a former European
colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that
the USA became a monster in which the taints, the sickness, and
the inhumanity of Europe has grown to appalling dimensions.
The
Third World today faces Europe like a colossal mass, whose aim
should be to try to resolve the problems to which Europe has not
been able to find the answers. It is a question of the Third World
starting a new history of man, a history which will have regard to
the sometimes prodigious thesis which Europe has put forward, but
which will also not forget Europe’s crimes, of which the most
horrible was committed in the heart of man and consisted of the
pathological tearing apart of his functions and the crumbling away
of his unity. |
No, there is no question of a return to nature.
It is simply a very concrete question of not dragging men towards
mutilation, of not imposing upon the brain rhythms which very
quickly obliterates it and wreck it. The pretext of catching up
must not be used for pushing men around, to tear him away from
himself or from his privacy, to break and to kill him.
No, we do not want to catch up with anyone.
What we want to do is to go forward all the time, night and day,
in the company of man, in the company of all men.
*
* *
So the psychologists ought to stop
investigating and examining people of color, they ought to
investigate and examine their own corrupt society. That’s where
they belong. And once they are able to do that, then maybe we can
move on to build in the Third World.
I want to conclude, then, by reading a poem
that was written by a young man who works in SNCC, the
organization for which I work. His name is Worth Long. It’s
called "Arson and Cold Grace, or How I Years to Burn Baby,
Burn.”
We have found you out, four face
Americas, we have found you out.
We have found you out, false faced
farmers, we have found you out.
The sparks of suspicion are melting
your waters
And waters can’t drown them, the
fires are burning
And firemen can’t calm them with
falsely appeasing
And preachers can’t pray with
hopes for deceiving
Nor leaders deliver a lecture on
losing
Nor teachers inform them the chosen
are choosing
For now is the fire and fires
won’t answer
To logical reason and hopefully
seeming
Hot flames must devour the kneeling
and feeling
And torture the masters whose idiot
pleading
Get lost in the echoes of dancing
and bleeding.
We have found you out, four faced
farmers, we have found you out.
We have found you out, four faced America, we have found you
out. * * * *
Source:
To Free a Generation: The
Dialectics of Liberation, edited by David Cooper. London: Collier
Books, 1969. * * *
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posted 2 November 2007 |
