Black Power

The classic image of the Black Power Movement. Tommie Smith (center) and John Carlos (right) showing the Black Power salute in the 1968 Summer Olympics, while Silver medalist Peter Norman (left) wears an OPHR (Olympic Project for Human Rights) badge to show his support for the two African Americans.

Black Power is a political slogan which describes the aspiration of those ascribing to varying degrees of black nationalism to acquire full ethnic self-determination of African-Americans. More generally, the term describes a conscious choice for blacks to nurture and promote their own models of value rather than look for other races to validate them. It calls for blacks to identify their historical struggle and work to help themselves. The first person to use the term Black Power in its political context was Robert F. Williams, a writer and publisher of the 1950s and 60s. Mukasa Dada won the support of thousands of working class Africans when he chanted "Black Power" while Martin Luther King Jr. campaigned for what he termed an "integrated power".

It is important to note that black power did not strive for integration but rather to improve conditions for black people.

Internationalist offshoots of Black Power include African Internationalism, pan-Africanism, and black supremacy. Meanwhile, some Black Power activists within the United States, calling themselves "New Africans", believe that U.S. blacks should have their own independent nation-state made up of the Black Belt, because they claim the contiguous region is already majority-black. (The region has pockets of majority-black, but the region as a whole is not.)

Background

The movement for Black Power in the U.S. came during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Many Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members, specifically Stokely Carmichael, were becoming critical of the political line articulated by Martin Luther King Jr., among others, which advocated non-violent resistance to racism, and the ultimate goal of desegregation. SNCC members thought that blacks in the U.S. would be dominated by whites as long as they were citizens of a majority white nation. Because of this, SNCC adopted the principle of self-determination (i.e. Black Power, in the case of black people).

SNCC also saw racists had no qualms about the use of violence against blacks in the U.S. who would not "stay in their place," and that "accomodationist" Civil Rights strategies failed to secure sufficient concessions for blacks. As a result, as the Civil Rights Movement wore on, more radical, violent undertones intensified and began to more aggressively challenge white hegemony. Willie Ricks won the support of thousands whenever he spoke to a crowd of working-class African-Americans, when he chanted "Black Power" — but even as that idea was becoming dominant among the masses, who faced the reality of everyday warfare being waged against them and their community, Martin Luther King Jr. continued to campaign for what he termed an "integrated power." The idea of integrated power is that once racism has been broken down, everyone will become "colorblind" and blacks will be able to fully assimilate into U.S. society.

Black Power positions

Advocates of Black Power generally argue that the assimilation or integration robs Africans (which includes African-Americans) of their heritage and dignity. Omali Yeshitela, leader of the Uhuru Movement and Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, argues that Africans have historically fought to protect their lands, cultures and freedoms from European colonialists, and that any integration into the society which has stolen your people and their wealth is more than the Marxist critique of "uniting with imperialism"; it is actually an act of treason.

Today, most Black Power advocates have not changed their self-sufficiency argument. Racism still exists worldwide and it is generally accepted that blacks in the United States, on the whole, did not assimilate into U.S. "mainstream" culture either by King's integration measures or by the self-sufficiency measures of Black Power â€" rather, blacks arguably became evermore oppressed, this time partially by "their own" people in a new black strata of the middle class and the ruling class. Black Power's advocates generally argue that the reason for this stalemate and further oppression of the vast majority of U.S. blacks is because Black Power's objectives have not had the opportunity to be fully carried through.

The Nation of Islam is perhaps the best-known Black Power group. Another fairly well-known group espousing most of the philosophies common to Black Power are the New Black Panthers. Some of the groups espousing the slogan are considered "black racist" in nature.

Criticisms of Black Power

More moderate critics of Black Power often remark that African-Americans are no longer truly "African", since this group is almost completely Western in its cultural orientations. These critics say that blacks are indeed "as American as apple pie and baseball", that the toil of their ancestors helped to lay the foundations of the United States, and that blacks are therefore neither less nor more than full citizens entitled to all rights guaranteed therein.

More severe criticisms leveled at Black Power have come from the Radical Left, anti-nationalists, communists and others who oppose identity politics. These forces, particularly the communist ones, say that Black Power is dangerous to proletarian internationalism.

Criticism of this phrase also charges that it is hypocritical for this phrase to be accepted as an ideology that represents empowerment and unity, whereas the phrase White Power is almost universally considered as a racist phrase.

Black Power: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents

Black Power

Background

Black Power positions

Criticisms of Black Power

See also

Further reading

External links