Without clicking on the link, can you guess when this article was written?
It is evident that we can be improved and elevated only just so fast and far as we shall improve and elevate ourselves.
—Negro Abolitionist Frederick Douglass in 1848
AFTER the slogan "Black Power" was chanted on a Negro march through Mississippi in 1966, it came to signify a new spirit of defiance at one edge of the campaign for civil rights. Among whites and moderate Negro leaders alike, the concept inspired fears of a procession of hot summers, a raging Negro separatist movement—and perhaps in the end a costly showdown between black and white that might send U.S. race relations all the way back to the post-Reconstruction period. The new movement quickly developed its list of fanatical leaders: Stokeley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, Ron Karenga and, in his special way, Cassius Clay. It fed largely on the despair and disaffection of the poor, the uneducated, the slum-bound Negro who had nothing to lose but his life.
As the months have gone by since Black Power burst thus violently onto the scene, there has been a slow, subtle but steady shift in the attitude of Negroes—even the moderate Negro leaders—who were desperately opposed to the violent and separatist nature of the new crusade. What has clearly developed from this change is a Black Power movement set on a more respectable base, which at its best is in the spirit of what Frederick Douglass was advocating more than a century ago. The most intelligent spokesmen for the new attitude think of it in terms of Black Consciousness—or, more completely, of Black Pride.
~snip~
The fact is that the major part of the Black Power movement, at least now, is far more moderate than its reputation. In the main, it desires neither to shoot its way out of white America nor to enter a supremacy contest with the white Establishment. Its goals lie within democracy's permissive framework, which has stretched many times before to assimilate minority groups and which, as far as the U.S. Negro is concerned, must stretch again for him.
Toward Integration What the Negro wants is far less revolutionary than what this country's founders demanded of England two centuries ago. The Negro does not want out. He wants in, and on terms that stand somewhat higher on the scale of reasonableness than the reaction to them in some corners of the white Establishment. As catalogued by the Washington Committee on Black Power, these terms include ten essentials, among them black pride ("which neither requests nor solicits; it demands"), black control of black communities, black economic productivity ("dignity through self-support"), black responsibility ("Black people themselves are responsible for their homes, their children, their schools, their streets"), black initiative, black excellence ("Let black people be the best"), black creativity and togetherness—and black self-defense.
Only human reason, black and white together, will decide whether the Negro gets what he wants. White America is only beginning to understand the new Negro mood, which is passing from the self-abasement that slavery taught to the self-sufficiency that lies still over a distant hill. The black is learning how to be black, rather than a carbon-copy white. And the pride, the new Negro institutions, the black cooperatives and the black student groups are all testimonials to his new spirit of independence. They will pass as the need for them declines, and as the Negro develops the respect for himself that will embolden him to demand the same respect from all of society.
At this difficult juncture, the omens are perhaps more favorable than otherwise. One of the more thought-provoking conclusions of a poll of the U.S. Negro community reported by Harvard Sociologist Gary Marx suggests that tolerance for the white man increases in proportion to Negro civil rights militance. The black to fear is the one who has not yet been exposed to the discipline of self-pride—the unawakened 75% Negro majority that lies outside the civil rights movement, and has felt almost none of its effects. This Negro has nothing to lose by venting his frustrations in violence. The new Negro knows how much damage violence can do to his own cause.
In the broad spectrum of the Black Power movement, there is indeed a regrettable taint of reverse racism. With this comes the risk of erasing much that has been accomplished in all the years of civil rights activity. Within the movement, too, are seeds of violence and destruction. Yet, at its moderate best, it can be a powerful force to develop the Negro's pride and the control of his own life. On those terms, and as a temporary phenomenon, it can be a power for good and can become a step toward the truly integrated society that must be the ultimate objective of black and white alike.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,712007-1,00.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
