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This is a very powerful and accurate account, brief as it is, of how the European/White capitalist class built its base in the continent they were colonizing. Martin Luther King speaks in class terms here talking of the white European peasants and the need to build an "economic floor" under them in some ways similar to the floor they built under the Protestants they imported in to Ireland as a base from which to dispossess the native population of its land and rights.
I saw this on the internet posted by someone on Facebook, a religious group I believe. The person that posted it added the headline "The Real Reason the Government Took Him Out." I believe the author of the headline sees economic empowerment and black capitalism as the way to liberation and an end to racism. I do not agree with this view nor did Malcolm X.
So that headline is not completely accurate I don’t believe. The ruling class in
the US did not like that he told the truth about the history of this
country. What he says here is true and it is dangerous in that it
undermines the accepted narrative intended to portray whites as superior
in every way to blacks leaving out the favorable treatment one gets over the other. But what is the motive for this
white ruling class history? It is to maintain it's position as a ruling
class and to do that it must divide the exploited. Every ruling class does this. Along with his ability to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people from all different backgrounds Martin Luther King was so dangerous because he was saying dangerous things and expressing ideas that if taken up by masses of people threaten the position of the ruling class and their exploitative brutal system.
Where MLK was a real threat to this
white racist ruling class was his bringing together all oppressed
peoples and toward the end of his life talking about the need to change
the system. and talking of socialism. Martin Luther King led a mass movement against exploitation
and injustice. His approach united the working class against oppression.
This is what made him so dangerous, the concept of working class unity.
In a letter to Coretta Scott in July 1952 King wrote:
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my
economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a
noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the
very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived
its usefulness.”
In a speech to his staff in 1966 he said:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro
without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending
the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re
really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are
messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now
this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really
means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”
“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism….
There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move
toward a democratic socialism.”
And in a speech to the Southern Christian leadership Conference in Atlanta Georgia on August 16, 1967 he said:
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty
million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question,
you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader
distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to
question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and
more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”
He said to New York Times reporter José Iglesias in 1968:
“In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”
Same with
Malcom X who was increasingly moving toward the
socialist alternative to capital. And both men were also moving closer to
organized labor as well speaking at rallies strikes and labor events. They
spoke in class terms.
Malcolm X said that "You can't have capitalism without racism". What is that but a condemnation of a social system. It is far more dangerous than going around saying all white people are devils. Malcolm X was not killed by the state when he was saying that, he was useful to the white racist ruling class who are not afraid of nationalism or separatists that make no class distinctions at all between groups. Toward the end of his life he was questioning the concept of black nationalism and what it meant. He said: “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the
oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a
clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone
and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe
that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be
based on the color of the skin...” It is inconceivable that this statement from Malcolm X, who, along with Martin Luther King is one of the great US revolutionaries of the 20th century, did not terrify the white racist ruling class in this country. It is a statement which opens a path to him and his ideas for millions upon millions of oppressed and exploited people,
In a January 19, 1965, Toronto television interview, Pierre Berton asked Malcolm X whether he still advocated a Black state in
North Americahe said he didn't and that, “I believe in a society in which
people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.”
In the same interview he told of meeting the Algerian ambassador when he was visiting Ghana in 1964, a man who he respected, the issue of black nationalism came up. Malcolm X said, the
ambassador asked him, “Well, where did that leave him? Because he was
white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances,
he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory
of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave
revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me
where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to
overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any
means necessary.” Malcolm X The Final Speeches. Pathfinder Press The struggle for working class unity does not negate the struggle for black liberation or the liberation of any specially oppressed section of society----it strengthens it.
Black History Month in my workplace (I'm since retired) was a very festive affair, celebrating African dance and African American artists, inventors and academics. Successful business people were also applauded. But the role of the the black worker in US history was absent. After all, workers aren't successful are we? And the history of the black worker in the US is a particularly rich and militant one. So to counter the bosses' sanitized, festive and apolitical stuff, I handed out my own version and distributed it as far and wide in the company as I could. I wrote this in 2001. One white worker after reading it asked me which month was white history month. So I wrote a second part answering his question and distributed that. I'll post it toward the end of February.
Black History Month
February is Black History month and union members and workers in general should consider the tremendous role that African Americans have played in the struggle for civil and democratic rights. Inventors and the accomplishments of individuals are important but what is more important than the individual is the movement that lies behind them and their social impact. The way Black History is presented ignores the collective struggle of black working people focusing instead on the contributions of individuals (only made possible by the collective struggle) and the success of black capitalism. It is a sanitized version of history.
Of course, Martin Luther King and Malcolm X stand out as two of the giants of American history in general and African American history in particular. These two individuals arose during a period of social upheaval in this country, a time when the very foundation of an inherently savage and racist state was threatened by a mass movement of a huge segment of the population. Both these individuals were, in their different ways, voices of this movement. Both very political people, hounded by the FBI and the state and eventually, as many believe including this writer, murdered by it; in Malcom X's case with the apparent cooperation of now Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan. Malcolm X and Dr. King, due to their popularity among the black population, as well as the white, have been reluctantly accepted and given holidays etc. to commemorate their names. Their political development, what they actually stood for, particularly in the case of Malcolm X, has been sanitized.
It is impossible in such a short space to give an historical account of the role of African Americans in the Labor and working class movement. But two recent figures, one unknown to many and one well known, must also stand out. E.D. Nixon and Rosa Parks. E.D. Nixon was in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters AFL-CIO and through his Union activism had learned many organizational skills which he used as president of the Montgomery, Alabama NAACP. Rosa Parks, was secretary of this chapter and eventually ended up working as Nixon's secretary. It was Brother Nixon who made bond for Rosa Parks when she was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on the bus to a white man. It was E.D. Nixon, trade unionist and member of the Sleeping Car Porters Union that decided that Rosa Parks' case was the perfect case for a boycott of the Montgomery buses. This was the spark that in many ways is seen as the beginning of the civil rights movement that changed U.S. society and the world forever.
Despite views to the contrary, Rosa Parks was not this meek lady who just happened to be too tired to get up out of her seat one day. Her life in the South had prepared her many times for moments like these and as she said, "I had almost a life history of being rebellious about being mistreated because of my color." E. D. Nixon made another historic decision that was to influence history and the life of one individual in particular. While listening to a guest speaker for the NAACP at the state teachers college he commented to his friend after the speech that, "...you know, that guy made a heck of a speech." That "guy " was Martin Luther King, and it was Nixon who recommended King for the presidency of the Montgomery Improvement Association responsible for running the boycott.
The history of African American workers in the struggle for equality for all people is impressive. Many were often forced at gun-point to cross picket lines by agents of the employers or the police who were representing the employers. This was done by the employers to increase racial tension and division among the white and black workers, as they do today but much more subtly. Black workers often found themselves with nowhere to go as they were abused by the employers and excluded from the Unions on the basis of their color. From the Colored National labor Union of the 1870's to the present day, African American workers organizations have fought for equality for all workers. The struggle against segregated unions was something all workers should thank them for as we have all benefited from it.
It is no accident that perhaps the greatest American leader of the modern era, Malcolm X was assassinated at a period in his life when he spoke for unity across color lines as opposed to a period when he supported segregation and made viscous attacks on white people in general with no class distinctions but solely along racial lines. Though hated by the establishment in his early years, the role he was playing of dividing workers along color lines was much more acceptable than his calls for unity toward the end of his life as his thinking changed and he took a more class approach to politics.
When both he and Martin Luther King moved closer to the Trade Union movement (King was killed while supporting an AFSCME Picket line and Malcolm X was speaking more often at Union functions) they became a bigger threat. After all, these were the organizations of predominantly white workers. Support from liberal middle class whites was one thing, but white workers looking to black leaders, particularly ones who attacked the system itself, was unacceptable. The failure of the Labor leadership to combat racism correctly is exemplified by their failure to win Malcolm X. I believe he was at one time in the UAW, and had the Unions fought racism in an aggressive and militant way he would undoubtedly have been attracted to them. Instead, the Nation of Islam despite its sectarian and non-class approach, but vocal attacks on racism, offered him what appeared to be a legitimate explanation of the horror and history that was his life and the life of many of his people here in the U.S.
Malcolm X clearly had a global view before his death. He formed the Organization for Afro American Unity and said in Feb. 1967:
"Any kind of movement for freedom of Black people based solely within the confines of America is absolutely doomed to fail. So one of the first steps by those of us in the Organization of Afro American Unity was to come up with a program that would make our grievances international and make the world see that our problem was no longer a Negro problem or an American problem but a human problem. A problem for humanity. And a problem which should be attacked by all elements of humanity."
And on many of the mainstream Black leaders of the time who, like many today have found comfortable niches for themselves in the system, cozying up to rich whites with power or like those that kiss up to the white employers while attacking white workers, he said:
"And these hand-picked Negroes were given big positions and then they were used to open up their mouths and tell the world, "Look at how much progress we're making." He should say, look at how much progress he is making. For while these hand-picked Negroes were eating high on the hog, rubbing elbows with white folk, sitting in Washington, D.C., the masses of black people in this country continued to live in the slum and in the ghetto. The masses of Black people in this country remain unemployed and the masses of Black people in this country continue to go to the worst schools and get the worst education."
Malcolm X was assassinated as he was developing his thinking more and more along lines that included all workers in the struggle for justice. Had he not been cut down so early in life, it is quite possible that so many of us would have come to love and respect him as the great individual that he was and it is entirely possible he could have influenced greatly, the direction of the Labor movement for the better.
Of course, US capitalism has thrived on racism and oppression. It's in the nature of the system. And part of this is to seek to repress every aspect of culture that is not under big business’ control, including that culture that comes from the experience of black Americans. This also means trying to belittle the role that black people in general and as individuals have played in this country. It's important to counter this subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) racist propaganda. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that the other side of the equation is that all oppressed people -- that is, all working class people -- have more in common than any workers do with any capitalists. And just as white capitalists try to bind white workers to them, try to convince them they are on the same side because they are white skinned, so do the black capitalists with regard to black workers-- the better to exploit us all.
For more reading on the History of African Americans and the labor movement see, Philip Foner, "Organized Labor and the Black Worker" Indignant heart by Charles Denby Negroes with Guns by Robert F Williams And on the civil rights movement, the excellent, "My Soul is Rested" Interviews with many of the participants by Howell Raines.
“I believe that there
will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the
oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want
freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the
systems of exploitation.”
Malcom X, Speech to Barnard College and Columbia University February 18th 1965
by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
I remember reading Malcom X's speeches and how as he
developed his political thinking he was influenced by the colonial revolutions
in Africa and meeting with Nyere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah and others. He had
been sent by Elijah Muhammad to meet with the Klan in December of 1960 as the
Nation of Islam was in the process of making deals with the KKK for land in the
South. It disgusted him and Malcolm X was never sent back there by the
NOI. "I have never gone along with no Ku Klux Klan" he
said.
As a young kid growing up in England I have to say I was not
drawn to Malcolm X in any way. Why would I be? In his his early years he
would never have considered working class unity, workers of all colors,
nationality, races etc, joining together in struggle against capitalism and the
filth that goes with it. Plus, my thinking was tarred by the conditions I found
myself in and my mind was not fully open to such politics either; I recall being
influenced to a certain degree by the racist politics of Enoch Powell for a
brief moment in time. He was a very clever racist intellectual. But as I always
tell young workers getting involved in politics today, Malcolm X is an example
of how people can change and how objective conditions and world events can
transform us.
Over a short period of time since his early childhood and
experiencing the horror and brutality of racism, including the murder of his
own father, he became a pimp, got involved in drug dealing and other unsavory
activity. He then found in a religious cult a theoretical explanation that at
the time made some sense of what was happening to him and all black
people.
Later on, his travels and the colonial revolutions in Africa
had a huge influence on his thinking, broadened his horizons and he became one
of the 20th centuries greatest and most influential revolutionary
leaders. The black revolt in the US, the colonial revolutions in Africa
as nation after nation drove out the direct rule of European colonialism, these
were the events that were taking place around him.
Malcom X's influence has been so powerful that the white
racist capitalist class cannot ignore him. But, as they do with Martin Luther
King, they create a carnival like atmosphere around these figures as a
means of obscuring their ideas, it's just about blackness. How they thought, their differences and how they saw society and what
could be done to change the world around them is shoved to the background. This
is particularly the case with Malcolm X how his thinking was rapidly shifting
and that toward the end of his life was clearly moving towards a socialist view
of the world. When asked by Pierre Breton in January 1965:
"But you no
longer believe in a black state?", he replied, "No, I believe in a
society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of
equality."
Five weeks before his assassination he gave an interview to
the Young Socialist Newspaper and was asked to define Black Nationalism. His
answer was:
I
used to define black nationalism as the idea that the black man should control
the economy of his community, the politics of his community, and so forth.
But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking
with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word (and has his
credentials as such for having carried on a successful revolution against
oppression in his country). When I told him that my political, social and
economic philosophy was black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well,
where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was
Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my
objective as the victory of black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where
does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he
showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries,
dedicated to overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth
by any means necessary.*
So, I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my
definition of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems
confronting our people as black nationalism? And if you noticed, I haven't been
using the expression for several months. But I still would be hard pressed to
give a specific definition of the over-all philosophy which I think is
necessary for the liberation of the black people in this country.
Malcolm X was also speaking to the organized working class. He spoke to members of 1199 supporting their 59 day strike in 1962. He was clearly moving more towards a position of working class unity, of
the unity of all oppressed people against the oppressor. Malcolm X was not serving the interests of the US ruling class, albeit unintentionally as in the past, when his separatist views and lumping of all white people in one basket were useful to them as a means of weakening and dividing the working class as a whole.
Portraying all black leaders as having the same views was also useful. Clearly, Minister Louis Farrahkhan, the present leader of the Nation of Islam does not have the same world view as Malcolm X. Farrakhan, apart form being a cultish religious figure, is an extremely wealthy man and supports black capitalism. His struggle is for the freedom of black capitalism to exploit workers like their more powerful white counterparts, he knows he cannot be part of the white racists ruling class. It is useful to the white capitalist class to put these two figures with opposing political views in the same basket where their actual ideas can be obscured.
There is a tendency for the black petty bourgeois today, those who claim black capitalism as the solution to racism, to do the same. They will often quote Malcolm X but they rarely if ever quote his statement that, "You can't have capitalism without racism." The reason this class avoids this statement is that the conclusion one must draw from it is that we have to overthrow capitalism and we cannot overthrow capitalism without working class unity. Working class unity threatens the very existence of capitalism and the white racist bourgeois know it, so do the white petty bourgeois layers and so do the black petty bourgeois. It means class suicide for these layers in society but particularly so for the black capitalist class.
Hundreds of years of isolation and exclusion from "normal" society which also meant an inability to accumulate and have access to capital, suppressed the growth of such a class and it is socially weaker than its white counterparts who have much closer connections to the rulers of society.
The heroic struggle of the black workers and youth during the 50's and 60's forced the white racist bosses' to open some doors, to help strengthen the black middle class as a buffer between them and the revolutionary potential of the black working class and as a counter to working class unity. In times of increased opposition to racism and oppression in all its forms they can be dragged out to warn that "you can make it, look at us, but you have to work within the system."
How can anyone not look and listen to Malcolm X in this video and not be moved by this person, drawn to him? He is human you can see it. His home had been bombed, he knew his life was in danger from the state and from the Nation of Islam. That is another thing, how may white workers have read about him, read that autobiography by Haley, read his speeches? Of course he says things that are not pleasant, I don't agree with them, never did but you will notice his evolution. But I suggest that if you can't understand his history (the terror of the Klan and the apathy of millions to that terror) and look at him and people like him with that in mind, the problem is yours to solve. But most of all, he is an example of how a person can learn and change if they are willing. He admits his failings, he admits he simply aped what he was told by a cult figure.
He was a beautiful human being.
I was reading an
article in the Guardian this morning about Michel Foucault and his philosophy that appears to me, a person that never read
any of his works, as all about the self, the individual and how change comes
though conquering our failings like racism, sexism and so on. The article
points out that this world view led to the self-help gurus of the late 60’s and
early seventies. I don’t think I ever had an inkling to read books by gurus
about how change is all about me and my individual will. We do not exist and
our conscious doesn’t develop outside of society.
When I first arrived in the US my friend and I laughed at the title of a
book a liberal middle-class university educated friend was all agog about
called I’m OK, You’re OK and how it
changed her and if she was able to change herself she could then help change the
world. It’s really the reverse of the way things are it seems to me. We
mockingly referred to the book’s title as I’m OK You’re OK the rest can fuck
off.
The Guardian article points out how this individualistic approach to the
world and its problems has led to a whole array of apologies and public
confessions by celebrities and other rich famous people. I saw the nauseating
advertisement on TV with rich white Hollywood types publicly “’taking responsibility’ for ‘every
unchecked moment’, every ‘stereotype’, every time they ‘remain silent’ or ‘turn
a blind eye’”. A banker’s daughter who is also an actor
apologized the other day for all the things she said that were not correct
decades ago.
I listened to Robin DiAngelo,
describing the contents of her trashy book, White Fragility which has the same
approach, that the first step toward eliminating racism is confessing to it and
apologizing basically. Here in the US you will often be told that you have to
leave your white privilege at the door and certainly cop to it publicly. If you
have white skin, you’re born racist basically according to Robin DiAngelo.I
should add that in my experience it is overwhelmingly white liberals and both
black and white academics that promote this nonsense. I rarely if ever heard this from
black blue-collar workers.
I commented on Ms
DiAngelo’s book here: Fighting Racism, Liberal Academia to
the Rescue With White Fragility and the Black American linguist and professor
of English literature John McWhorter added his views from a different
perspective in The
Dehumanizing Condescension of White Fragility. Ms DiAngelo
has done very well from her book, the woke liberals love it as it appeals to
their guilt complex and the ruling class both liberal and conservative find it
most useful in undermining any notion of class in society. It’s all about
identity politics.
Naturally, workers, especially white workers when it comes to confronting
racism, are not drawn to this approach and are not supposed to be; it’s an
approach designed to divide the working class not unite us and to make white
workers feel guilty because they have white skin tone.
The millionaire actor
Ann Hathaway got in on the game stating publicly:
White people- including me, including
you- must take into the marrow of our privileged bones the truth that ALL black
people fear for their lives DAILY in America and have done so for
GENERATIONS. White people DO NOT have equivalence for this fear of
violence.
Given those givens, we must ask our (white)selves- how “decent” are we
really? Not in our intent, but in our actions? In our
lack of action?
Again, it is
important to note that that “white” here
is a race of people, a collective whole. The white factory worker, the white
truck driver, nurse, office worker or worker in one of those poultry factories
in the US South are all included in Ann Hathaway‘s world. Hathaway had a
billionaire boyfriend at the time and spent time sailing around the
Mediterranean in his yacht according to reports in the media. I know no white
person with such luxury, or spare time to do that.
This is why I always
avoided the term “White Supremacy” or
“White Privilege” that types like
Hathaway like to throw around because it is always devoid of class content. I let Ann Hathaway know how I felt about her advice. At one time, the
Ford Foundation was sponsoring conferences on white supremacy and financially
supported the work of the Equal Justice Society go check out the individuals and
companies behind this group and decide if they support the unity of workers
along class lines.
The capitalist class
and corporate America is on board with this divisive approach to racism. The
authors of the Guardian article point that out when they write:
“This political phenomenon is echoed
and reinforced by corporations and self-help industries that march ever deeper
into our psyches, encouraging us to practice “mindfulness techniques” at work,
for example.”
Racism and other
forms of social division are worn in to the fabric of class society. Malcolm X
understood that when he said that, “You
can’t have capitalism without racism.”
Rather than embrace all
the individual self-help cures and psycho analysis, it is worth learning that
lesson from one of the most influential revolutionaries of the 20th
century. But Malcolm X’s profound statement, present’s a problem, it means
challenging the system which is the root cause. It’s much safer to leave the
capitalist system out of it and push DiAngelo’s claim that, “I try, as hard as I can, to counter it,……..but
we can never be free of it.” In other
words, it is an individual failing so woman up and apologize.
Similar is Ibram X
Kendi’s argument that society needs an department of anti-racism not elected by
the public and with him or who he selects on it I assume. Kendi comes from a
very privileged background and both he, DiAngelo and others like them while
right in the sense that we can’t be free of it, refuse to deal with the system and
the class that promotes it.
A friend of mine from
Ireland was accused of being a colonizer by a US person of color one time
without the slightest idea that Ireland has never colonized any other country.
It was the first colony of English then British capitalism; many of the
practices and policies British capitalism applied in India and Africa were
first put in to place in Ireland. But for those like Ibram Kendi and many
others their aim is to improve their own class interests in capitalist society.
Both DiAngelo and Kendi’s books are NY Times best sellers. The liberals love
it, the conservatives opportunistically use it as a means of winning working
class support for their anti-worker agenda knowing that life has become ever
more difficult for white workers in the US.
That the life expectancy of whites, a so-called privileged group, is declining
tells us something and should, if our goal is to really eliminate the causes of
racism, allow us recognize that it has become much more difficult for the US
ruling class to provide white workers with the advantages possible in the past
and keep workers apart. This makes class unity an easier prospect assuming
there are social forces promoting it in a serious way and building a movement along
those lines. When the leadership of the working class, whether it be organized
labor or political forces, fails to play that role, the right will be quite
willing to do so and is stepping it to that vacuum with some success.
When approaching
workers of any background about socially divisive issues and the gradations of
privileges that one group of workers has over another we should always start
from a position of which class benefits from our division. The class that does
will be the source of the divide and rule strategy.
When we understand origin
of the source we can combat it. White privilege is real as is patriarchy. But
the term white as a racial definition is a social construct aimed at undermining
working class unity, the same way that support for the ideas expressed by Kendi
and DiAngelo do.
The authors of the
Guardian article are correct when they write: “With material stakes of politics
growing ever more urgent many in the liberal center would much prefer us to
busy ourselves with loud rituals announcing our inner battles.”
The consequences of
dealing with capitalism and racism as an integral part of it means the end of
privileges for a lot of folks who want desperately to maintain them and will go
to extreme lengths to achieve that.
This video above is ection of a longer speech but it so clearly, without complication, personal attacks or verbiage, explains what history is and why it matters. Any discussion about the situation Black working class communities face should start with this. Imagine the advantage this gave to some and disadvantage to others. It was not a decision based on the white racist ruling class love for the white poor of Europe that were brought here, it was a solid political decision, a decision that was good for business.; a classic divide and rule decision. It was this taking land from one group and giving to another, while also barring another from participating in the benefits of it. In truth, the entire working class has been harmed by it and the damage cannot be rectified within the framework of capitalist and the so-called free market. Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X drew this conclusion toward the end of their lives as the quotes below show.
Along with his ability to mobilize
hundreds of thousands of people from all different backgrounds Martin
Luther King was so dangerous because he was saying dangerous things and
expressing ideas that if taken up by masses of people threaten the
position of the ruling class and their exploitative brutal system. Where MLK was a real threat to this
white racist ruling class was his bringing together all oppressed
peoples and toward the end of his life talking about the need to change
the system. and talking of socialism. Martin Luther King led a mass movement against exploitation
and injustice. His approach united the working class against oppression.
This is what made him so dangerous, the concept of working class unity. In a letter to Coretta Scott in July 1952 King wrote:
“I imagine you already know that I am much more socialistic in my
economic theory than capitalistic… [Capitalism] started out with a
noble and high motive… but like most human systems it fell victim to the
very thing it was revolting against. So today capitalism has out-lived
its usefulness.”
In a speech to his staff in 1966 he said:
“You can’t talk about solving the economic problem of the Negro
without talking about billions of dollars. You can’t talk about ending
the slums without first saying profit must be taken out of slums. You’re
really tampering and getting on dangerous ground because you are
messing with folk then. You are messing with captains of industry. Now
this means that we are treading in difficult water, because it really
means that we are saying that something is wrong with capitalism.”
“[W]e are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism….
There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move
toward a democratic socialism.”
And in a speech to the Southern Christian leadership Conference in Atlanta Georgia on August 16, 1967 he said:
“And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty
million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question,
you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader
distribution of wealth.’ When you ask that question, you begin to
question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and
more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society…”
He said to New York Times reporter José Iglesias in 1968:
“In a sense, you could say we’re involved in the class struggle.”
Malcolm X Same with
Malcolm X who was increasingly moving toward the
socialist alternative to capital. And both men were also moving closer to
organized labor as well speaking at rallies strikes and labor events. They
spoke in class terms. Malcolm X said that "You can't have capitalism without racism".
What is that but a condemnation of a social system. It is far more
dangerous than going around saying all white people are devils. Malcolm X
was not killed by the state when he was saying that, he was useful to
the white racist ruling class who are not afraid of nationalism or
separatists that make no class distinctions at all between groups. Toward the end of his life he was questioning the concept of black nationalism and what it meant. He said: “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the
oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a
clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone
and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe
that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be
based on the color of the skin...” It is inconceivable that this
statement from Malcolm X, who, along with Martin Luther King is one of
the great US revolutionaries of the 20th century, did not terrify the
white racist ruling class in this country. It is a statement which opens a path to him and his ideas for millions upon millions of oppressed and exploited people,
In a January 19, 1965, Toronto television interview, Pierre Berton asked Malcolm X whether he still advocated a Black state in
North Americahe said he didn't and that, “I believe in a society in which
people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.” In the same interview he told of meeting
the Algerian ambassador when he was visiting Ghana in 1964, a man who
he respected, the issue of black nationalism came up. Malcolm X said, the
ambassador asked him, “Well, where did that leave him? Because he was
white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances,
he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory
of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave
revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me
where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to
overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any
means necessary.” Malcolm X The Final Speeches. Pathfinder Press The struggle for working class unity
does not negate the struggle for black liberation or the liberation of
any specially oppressed section of society----it strengthens it.
If you read
Lenin's quotes in this image of the great revolutionary Mexican artist
Frida Khalo, they apply to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X as well. Under
pressure from the black working class and the influence these two revolutionary figures were having on the working class as a whole, the US capitalist class was forced to publicly recognize them, naming schools buildings, and boulevards after them, after the very same US ruling class had them murdered. Putin could learn a thing or two from the US state security forces.
Both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, like most genuine fighters were evolving, changing their views, developing an understanding of the world as they moved through it. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis when he went to support striking janitors who were members of my former union AFSCME. When alive they were constantly demonized.
The FBI constantly harassed MLK sending him threatening letters, sending prostitutes to entrap him, bugging his rooms. They sent him an anonymous letter purportedly from a black person pressuring him to suicide: "King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You
know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact
number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite
practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you.
You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is
bared to the nation."
Malcolm X was also moving closer to the organized working class as well. He spoke at Local 1199 rallies supporting that health care local in its battles for decent pay and conditions for its members. Members of the Memphis Afscme Local and Local 1199 were lower paid and predominantly workers of color. Local 1199 and its left wing leadership faced ongoing harassment and investigation from the US government. Martin Luther King said 1199 was his "favorite union."
Moving toward the organized working class and our organizations was a significant threat to US capitalism as this would tend to bring workers of different backgrounds closer together, lead them on strike together and open the door to undermining the bosses' racist divide and rule strategy. It was bad enough the Civil Rights movement was embarrassing the US throughout the world as it portrayed itself as the cradle of democracy. This was being revealed as the propaganda it was as the most powerful military machine in the world dropped thousands of tons of bombs and chemicals on the Vietnamese people who had, like Iraq, made no threatening moves toward the US at all.
Watching vicious dogs being set upon black people, women, children, the aged, in the US when all they were demanding was basic civil rights expected in a bourgeois democracy did not look good at all either and that's what we were seeing on TV. They learned from bringing the masses live TV coverage of wars and conflicts. Revolutionary figures like Malcom X and Martin Luther King have almost become carnival characters as their lives are celebrated after death. They are portrayed only as "black" leaders and sometimes you can find them on posters with other famous black leaders like Louis Farrakhan. Their ideas are never stressed or how they saw the world or what they thought about society and how much they differed from one another. Malcolm X was clearly moving to a socialist position after he traveled to Africa and met revolutionaries there. Martin Luther King led a mass movement and organized the "poor people's" march, hardly a nationalist position and he too was talking about socialism before he was assassinated by the US state. Malcolm X was talking about the revolution being about the oppressed against the oppressor and not being based on skin tone and met the same fate. Louis Farrakhan who took over from Malcolm X at the Harlem mosque had a very different world view. Apart from the inherent sexism in the Nation of Islam philosophy Farrakhan is a proponent of black capitalism with him playing a prominent role. These three people had very different views of the world, Farrakhan a right winger with the other two clearly on the left. While Farrakhan is also demonized by the white capitalist ruling class as a means of sowing some terror in to the minds of white workers, it was Martin Luther King and Malcolm X they feared, especially as Malcolm X moved closer to MLK and his approach to building a mass movement and Martin Luther King was openly opposing the war in Vietnam. Farrakhan and his philosophy are no threat to them at all as his worldview is divisive, isolates workers from each other and weakens any offensive against capitalism which is the ideology he embraces. For the US ruling class, lumping them all together simply as "black" leaders serves their interests well. These three people were as different as chalk and cheese. Of course they all have one thing in common, growing up as black people in a racist society with a violent history, they are all victims of that and they all have to deal with institutionalized racism, but King and Malcolm X had a vision for the future of humanity that could be understood by all workers no matter what their background. Ideas when they become accepted in the mass consciousness are dangerous things.
That's why there is such a powerful effort on the part of the US capitalist class to, as Lenin puts it, "Convert them to harmless icons."
Well
the conservative blog Legal Insurrection that labeled this liberal Cornell professor
“anti-capitalist” has nothing to worry about. He doesn’t even mention the term
capitalism, capitalist or workers in the interview in a Cornell University
paper as far as I can see.
He was criticized for raising the
case of the Palestinian people under the brutal occupation of Zionist Apartheid
at a “knee
in” last week in the ongoing
protests against racism and police brutality here in the US. He started a
pro-Palestinian chant in an attempt to connect “…expressions
of white supremacy on campus and in the United States to systemic colonial
violence abroad.”, the author of the piece writes. He should be commended for that.
But the
professor goes on, “The colonial
occupation of Palestine remains one of the world’s most visible campaigns of
white supremacist violence." This says very little about the
history of the occupation and the formation of the state of Israel in the wake
of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War One. The first British
governor of Jerusalem referred to the creation of a Jewish state as “Our loyal little Ulster in the Middle
East”. The Arab masses were not too reliable with much revolutionary
potential. Europe’s Jews could become the Palestinian equivalent of Ulster’s
Protestant minority.
The
professor talks of linking struggles at home with those abroad , “anti-racism with anti-colonialism,
anti-imperialism, and anti-militarism,”. Anti-capitalism does not appear here, though
it would have been a golden opportunity to attack the capitalist system and
those that govern it using racism, misogyny, militarism and other means to
maintain their rule
The
professor adds, “If we’re committed to
liberation, connecting the local and the global seems not only appropriate, but
absolutely necessary,”
Well,
internationalism is crucial if we are to overthrow capitalism and create a
humane global society in harmony with nature. Fighting racism, sexism and other
issues that keep the working class divided is just as crucial. But the working class do not exist for Professor Rickford. Capitalism likes to keep racism in its divide
and rule arsenal. As we have written before on this blog, the US ruling class
likes to keep it festering, forever tense as they pay lip service to how
important it is we all get along. When it breaks out in to the open this is
very expensive and disruptive for them. Only when their system, their class
rule is threatened, will they try to whip up open race warfare as a last resort. It is the role
of a united working class and revolutionary leadership to ensure it will be too
late for them at that point.
So
why doesn’t the professor mention the elephant in the room, the global system of
production we call capitalism?He
doesn’t mention it because he supports it. He calls for the liberation of the Palestinians and
points out that they still remain
colonized.
“Liberate” them from what? And replace
their oppression with what? De-colonize them from what? "White Supremacist Violence" I suppose the professor would say. Rockford certainly
doesn’t mean capitalism, he’s quite at home with it there at Cornell, prior to
that he was on the faculty at Dartmouth..His parents are both left academics and authors which explains his world view.
Like
most black left petite bourgeois (and the white ones) Rickford keeps it safe. They never quote
Malcolm X who said that “You can’t have
capitalism without racism” because they don’t agree with Malcolm X on this
issue. They stay clear of this aspect of Malcolm X’s political development.
They have the totally opposite view that Malcolm X came to reject as he
questioned the validity of black nationalism as a solution to the racial
oppression black folks were experiencing in the US. They believe that racism “can” be eliminated under capitalism,
black capitalism is the answer.
One
can’t fault workers that belong to specially oppressed minorities in society from
being drawn to nationalism, because of history and especially during times when
the class struggle is at an ebb. But Malcolm X was right; you can’t have
capitalism without racism. What flows from this is that capitalism has to be
overthrown if we want to get rid of racism it would seem to me. And capitalism
cannot be overthrown without working class unity. Racism and sexism are harmful
to workers unity and used by the capitalist class, black or white, to undermine
it.
Russell
Rickford studied at Howard and Columbia, and was on the Dartmouth faculty at
age 24 before Cornell. My guess is he didn’t hang out too much with black
workers, blue collar black workers especially. Like most upper middle class
academics he doesn’t see the working class as a force for change in
society.White Supremacy, Colonialism
these are safer to assault than capitalism, especially in major capitalist
education institutions like Dartmouth or Cornell, themselves bastions of white supremacy.
This
is the problem with Professor Rickford’s view of the world. It’s like Chris
Hedges and others. They point out what is bad, what we all know exists. But
they offer no solution because they do not see the working class as a force for
change. Malcolm X came to abandon black capitalism as the solution to racism in
America. He didn’t say that he believed there would be a social clash between
the oppressed and those who do the oppressing but that it wouldn’t be “….based on the color of the skin.” because
he thought it was fashionable.
A
prominent black South African trade union leader who I had some minor
connection to in the 1980’s getting my union to support him as he was under
assault by the Apartheid regime, said of the struggle against that racist
regime that “We don’t want to change the
color of the regime, we want to change the system”
Professor
Rickford doesn’t point to capitalism as the cause of human suffering because he
embraces it-------capitalism with a different face.
Professor Has No Regrets After Controversial Chant
“I never assume that most people share my politics,” Prof. Russell Rickford, history, told The Sun.
Activist
and scholar of black American history, Rickford joined Black Lives
Matter in Ithaca in 2015 and became a founding member of Cornell
Coalition for Inclusive Democracy last year, which led protests demanding the University to protect and support international Cornellians in March.
More recently, and more controversially, at a knee-in
last Wednesday following the professional athletes and Cornell students
who had been protesting racial violence, Rickford led the chant “Free
Palestine” just before the crowd kneeled.
Rickford’s chant was
followed by a scattered applause and a palpable unease among some in the
crowd. Shortly later, the chant “Free Palestine” was dubbed by conservative blogLegal Insurrection
as the “hijacking of other ‘social justice”’ causes to turn them
against Israel.” It also called Rickford “an anti-capitalist,
anti-Israel activist” after the protest.
Following the protest,
Rickford was met with criticism that he misused a platform framed for
solidarity with athletes and black Cornell students in addressing the
hotly debated Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Prof. Rickford
assumed that because we were here to protest racism on Cornell’s campus,
we all shared an opinion and belief on a separate issue,” wrote Arielle
Hazi ’18 in a Guest Room for The Sun. Hazi said she was “frustrated” with Rickford’s decision to initiate the chant.
Rickford
said his rhetorical strategy in leading the crowd in the chant “Free
Palestine” was precisely aligned with the aim of the protest.
“The
colonial occupation of Palestine remains one of the world’s most
visible campaigns of white supremacist violence,” Rickford said. The
event was held not just to bring awareness to violence against black
Americans, but as an expression of resistance against acts of white
supremacy — to which Rickford said Palestinians were subject without
exception under Israeli occupation.
Rickford said his chant
connected expressions of white supremacy on campus and in the United
States to systemic colonial violence abroad.
Comparisons of his chant with anti-Semitism, Rickford said, is effectively a insulation of ongoing colonial powers.
“It is also an attempt to silence the millions of Jews around the world who condemn Israel’s apartheid policies,” he said.
When
Rickford was growing up, black nationalism, amid its the cultural
resurgence in the 1990s, was a basis for his “early resistance to white
supremacy.” As he continued to evolve politically after college, he
studied the works of Marxist and Third Word theorists, from Frantz Fanon
to Amilcar Cabral, and has embraced a leftist view of society.
“I began to link anti-racism with anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and anti-militarism,” he said.
Protests
against racism in America today too often avoid a “direct confrontation
of power,” Rickford said. This avoidance of confrontation is something
Rickford said he has attempted to counteract in his speeches.
That is why he said he has called for liberation and anti-colonialism not only at home but, more importantly, around the world.
In
fact, Rickford said he had also mentioned the history of genocide and
dispossession of indigenous peoples in North America in his speech. But
he said that there was no complaint about it following the protest,
because that statement was not regarded as a serious challenge to the
ongoing practice of colonialist power.
“Those in power reserve the right to define the limits of acceptable political expression,” he said.
The
fact that people were specifically unhappy with Rickford’s remarks on
Palestine demonstrated that, to Rickford, his challenge of Palestinian
occupation was a threat to those in power in America.
“The
Palestinian people remain colonized,” he said. “Their oppression is
routinely justified in the United States, a society steeped in the
culture and logic of settler colonialism. All the great structures of
U.S. violence — mass incarceration, militarism, police terror, racism,
etc. — converge in the occupation of Palestine.”
Rickford said one’s dedication to principles of social justice and equality should not end at home.
“If
we’re committed to liberation, connecting the local and the global
seems not only appropriate, but absolutely necessary,” he said, adding
that his motivation behind leading the chant at the knee-in was to
challenge listeners to place their values in a global context.
The
Palestinian people, as a group that has long endured colonial
occupation and apartheid, to Rickford, were thus necessary to include in
the conversation about race and hate in America.
“I always invoke
Palestine when I speak publicly. It is part of my attempt to
demonstrate solidarity, as the Palestinian people have long done in
relation to the black freedom struggle,” he said.
Thank you Malcolm X for your struggle and your words. You inspired me when I
was growing up in rural Ireland to take up the struggle against injustice and
capitalism. I am disappointed when I see the middle class mainly university
based student movement here in the US leave out your most important statements.
That is the statements you made against capitalism.
Below I print some here on this day which would have
been your birthday if the US capitalist class, seeing how your were moving
toward working class unity and anti imperialism and anti capitalism, murdered
you. Malcolm X, you were a hero.
Malcolm's Words.
"It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the
system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an
eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and
suck any body's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become
more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the
helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, the capitalism has less
victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of
time in my opinion before it will collapse completely."
"We won't
organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them
have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out.
Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the
Republican Party."
“I believe
that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do
the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want
freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the
systems of exploitation.” —
"It is impossible to have capitalism without racism."
"You show me a capitalist and I will show you a blood sucker."
It should be noted that when Malcolm X says (above) you cannot have capitalism
without racism, this means that you cannot end racism without ending
capitalism. All those capitalists, capitalist supporters, middle class
academics and know all's and liberals who say they oppose racism but do not
oppose capitalism are either hypocrites or lacking in understanding of how the
world works. It should also be noted that before the US capitalist class
murdered Martin Luther king he also had come out for the US to move to
democratic socialism and had moved against the Vietnam war and US
imperialism.
"We will not try to fight fire with fire because all of the people that
FIRE is best put out with WATER. Therefore, the Black Panther Party will
not fight racism with racism. But we will fight racism with solidarity. We
will not fight capitalism with capitalism (Black capitalism), but with the
implementation of socialism and socialist programs for the people. We will
not fight U.S. government imperialism with more imperialism because the
peoples of the world and other races, especially in America, must fight
imperialism with proletarian internationalism." Black Panther Party Statement April 1969.
Another excellent piece below from the Black Agenda Report. I haven't yet seen this documentary, I am always very skeptical of anything dealing with the struggle of black Americans against racism and the violence that has accompanied it in US history as I am of any portrayal of working class history in general. The mass media, controlled by white capitalists, will not portray our history in any way that emphasizes the class struggle, or the need for class unity to overthrow capitalism and begin to eliminate racism. I just assumed this documentary would leave out Socialism in a documentary about the Black Panthers and Bruce Dixon seems to confirm this. R. Mellor
“Vanguard of the Revolution” is Liberal History, Strips and Omits Socialism from History of the Black Panther Party
by BAR managing editor Bruce A.Dixon
Stanley Nelson's documentary on the BPP is “history” by and for lazy
American liberals. He turns the BPP into a pop culture icon a T-shirt.
Nelson mentions guns hundreds of times, big naturals and swagger a few
dozen times but not the word “socialism” once in 2 hours. The BPP
described its Breakfast For Children and Free Medical Clinics every day
as “socialism” in person and in our newspaper, to each other and to the
neighborhoods we served.
I used to have a Che Guevara T-shirt. It was a pretty good shirt, but
it told me nothing about the man or his life's work. It had Che's face
on it, but by itself the face is just a pop culture icon, shorthand or
short-brain for everything you want to know, or everything think you
already know about it. That's what Stanley Nelson's film, Black
Panthers, Vanguard of the Revolution does to the Black Panther Party. He
made the movement of my youth an icon. A T-shirt.
On the plus side, it's a pretty good T-shirt. Vanguard of the
Revolution contains some great interview footage from Erika Huggins,
Elaine Brown, the freedom fighting Freeman brothers and Wayne Pharr, my
old comrade Michael McCarty and several others. On the minus side,
Nelson omits and obscures the domestic and global political context the
BPP came out of and thrived in. According to Vanguard of the Revolution,
the BPP arose out of black northern frustration after the passage of
civil rights legislation. It caught on due to the irresistible appeal of
its naturals, big guns, the murdermouthing rhetoric of Eldridge
Cleaver, downright sexiness, and black is beautiful, all of which earned
the BPP pop culture stardom. And pop culture stardom needs no further
explanation. Cue the music, fists in the air, and power to the people...
In Nelson's universe, the BPP splintered due to counterintelligence
operations launched against it by the government, it withered because of
brutal nationwide repression and was swamped with waves of police
informants. It died when rank and file members who did all the work
became exhausted, burnt out, and in some cases disillusioned by the
personal antics of BPP co-founder Huey Newton, which are examined at
some length.
Like my old Che T-shirt, Nelson's BPP has no historical context. The
film maker doesn't tell us, or maybe doesn't know himself what changed
about 1971 to cause the shrinkage of the BPP that led to its
concentration in Oakland by 1973 for the mayoral campaign of Bobby
Seale. He doesn't tell us why national liberation movements from
southern Africa to Vietnam to Palestine and the governments of
nonaligned Algeria and socialist Cuba reached out to and cooperated with
the BPP. Were they in love with our guns and nappy hairstyles too? The
best Nelson offers is that we were all “anti-American.”
Stanley Nelson is what Americans call a “liberal” and that's what
Vanguard of the Revolution is.... a liberal's take on the BPP. They were
black and beautiful, had some interesting things to say, and mostly
didn't deserve what they got. They were pop superstars, but stardom
comes and goes. American liberals like to pretend that the US global
doesn't exist, or is benign, and that its operations don't much affect
what goes on at home. And liberals know to steer clear of any favorable
mentions of socialism, or communism, or criticisms of capitalism.
Near the beginning of the film Nelson mentions the admonition to
black men that their fight is at home, not overseas. Here's some
context. When I was 18 in 1968, I too heard people repeating “Black man
your fight is at home, not in Vietnam.” I heard it from guys I knew a
couple years older fresh back from the US draftee army in Vietnam. They
told us the VietCong
--- Vietnamese guerillas fighting the US invaders in their country
would shout to them in English at night across the razor wire “Black man
why are you here? Your fight is at home!” That's the context, and we
talked about it the BPP political education classes and the BPP
newspaper. I learned soon after that their elder brothers, the Vietminh
had asked the same question the same way in French to African colonial
troops brought in to reassert French control over that country in the
1940s and 50s.
Unlike Stanley Nelson, those of us tuned into the movement of that
day were not just thinking inside the US. The wars against colonialism
and apartheid in Africa were on our mind, and the US war in Vietnam,
where the draftee army at the time made combat units disproportionately
black and brown made the black stake in US global empire something we
could not and did not ignore. The BPP and many radical blacks outside
the BPP saw ourselves as part of a trans-national, a global movement
against racist colonialism and capitalism, and for socialism. We said so
every chance we got, and there is plenty of archival footage to back it
up much of it just before and after the clips used in the film. It was
Nelson's choice not to use any of that, and not to query any of his
interviewees about it, unless that footage is still on the cutting room
floor.
The BPP tried to draw lessons from revolutions in China and the USSR,
from the Cuban experience at combating racism, from the writings and
speeches of African revolutionaries. We reached out to that global
movement as well as we were able, given our youth and inexperience, and
it reached back to us. The Cubans, Algerians, the revolutionary
movements around the world didn't open their doors to the Black Panther
Party because they liked our hairstyles or music or big talk or big
guns. They didn't do it, as someone in Nelson's film said with a
straight face, because we were “anti-Americans”. They did it because
they recognized the BPP as part of that global movement.
When we talked about the BPP's Breakfast for Children program we
called it socialism. That was how we explained it and the party's food
giveaways and free medical clinics to the people in the neighborhoods
and that was how we understood it. This too was all over the BPP
newspaper, but Nelson missed or omitted that too. In our poitical
education classes, many of which I led in Chicago, we studied Marx and
Engels and Lenin, Amilcar Cabral and Paulo Freire, Frantz Fanon, Che
Guevara, the daily newspapers and our own Black Panther newspaper. Our
paper had articles from North Korea, from South Africa, from China and
Vietnam.
The BPP wasn't destroyed by direct police repression either. To tell
the truth we never had more support than in the weeks after Fred Hampton
was murdered in Chicago, and the LAPD beseiged the Southern California
office in Los Angeles.
Nelson doesn't explain why the BPP had wide support among whites,
especially young whites up till 1971. The reason wasn't pop culture
stardom, big naturals, guns and big talk. It was the draft and the US
war in Vietnam. The draft de-legitimized the government among young
whites to the extent that many were willing to support a black
revolutionary movement which also denounced the war, the draft and
militarism along with much else at home. When the draft ended in 1971
and the masses of US troops came home, white support for the BPP
evaporated like snow in the springtime, and along with burnout and such
led to the decision to concentrate the organization's remaining
resources in Oakland for Bobby Seale's mayoral run.
Stanley Nelson is no doubt a fine film maker, and for all I know a good guy. What he ain't is a historian of 20th
century radical movements. He renders the BPP through his own liberal
lens and blind spots, stripping it of historical and political context
to get the icon that liberals think explains everything leaving out the
unpalatable politics. Vanguard of the Revolution is a T-shirt. A really
good one, but a T-shirt. I don't blame the man, he's not alone. Henry
Louis Gates in his TV offering did the same. This kind of stuff is
pretty much the liberal canon when it comes to black history.
Mistaking Vanguard of the Revolution for a real history of the BPP
puts the film maker's liberal blinders on young black activists looking
for clues. It directs them away from questioning capitalism, from
investigating socialism, from appreciating the influence from and upon
the global movement for peace, justice and socialism upon our movement
here inside the US. With this stuff as the historical standard it's no
wonder a generation of activists are seeking individual validation and
stardom, Facebook likes and Twitter followers instead of questioning
real authority and educating themselves and their communities to
struggle for power.
If we want to understand the meaning of black radical movements like
the BPP we'll need to hear from some black radical historians. So far
nothing comes close to the grasp of the BPP, its rise, fall, its intent,
impact, context and historical significance exhibited in Waldo Martin
and Joshua Bloom's Black Against Empire. It's a high standard to meet,
but it shouldn't be impossible.
I've already got a BPP T-shirt I can wear. I don't need another one that lasts an hour and 55 minutes.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and a
member of the state committee of the GA Green Party. Reach him via email
at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com.
February is Black History month and union members and workers in general should consider the tremendous role that African Americans have played in the struggle for civil and democratic rights. Inventors and the accomplishments of individuals are important but what is more important than the individual is the movement that lies behind them and their social impact. The way Black History is presented ignores the collective struggle of black working people focusing instead on the contributions of individuals (only made possible by the collective struggle) and the success of black capitalism. It is a sanitized version of history.
