We share with you a common struggle, it becomes increasingly clear; we have a common enemy. Our enemy is white Western imperialist society. Our struggle is to overthrow this system that feeds itself and expands itself through the economic and cultural exploitation of non-white, non-Western peoples—of the Third World.
We share with you also a common vision of the establishment of humanistic societies in the place of those now existing. We seek, with you, to change the power bases of the world—mankind will share the resources of their nations instead of having to give them up to foreign plunderers; civilizations will be able to retain their cultural sovereignty instead of being forced to submit to foreign rulers, who impose their own corrupt cultures on those civilizations they would dominate.
First Conference of the Organization of Latin American Solidarity, Cuba, July, 1967—after London.
Copyright © 1967 by Student Voice, SNCC Subsidiary.
Anglo9 society has been nearly successful in keeping all of us, the oppressed of the Third World, separated and fragmented. They do this for their survival; if we felt our unity we would know our strength. For hundreds of years here on this continent, where the Anglo is in the minority, he has succeeded in keeping all of us who are oppressed from realizing our common plight. But the call of Che Guevara for a continental struggle against a common enemy would seem to ameliorate this fragmentation among those who would resist Western imperialism. We speak with you, comrades, because we wish to make clear that we understand that our destinies are intertwined. Our world can only be the Third World; our only struggle, for the Third World; our only vision, of the Third World.
Until recently, most African-Americans thought that the best way to alleviate their oppression was through attempts at integration into the society. If we could enjoy public accommodations in the United States—motels, hotels, restaurants, and so forth—our condition would be bettered, many of us believed.
This attitude was characteristic of the “civil rights movement” and clearly points up the bourgeois character of that “movement.” Only the bourgeoisie are in a position to be concerned about public accommodations. The African-American masses, on the other hand, do not have any jobs, any housing worthy of the name “decent,” nor the money to enjoy restaurants, hotels, and motels. The civil rights movement did not actively involve the masses, because it did not speak to the needs of the masses.
Nonetheless, the civil rights movement was a beginning, and because its aims met resistance throughout the United States, depths of racism heretofore unrecognized were laid bare. It had been thought that the aims of the civil rights movement would be easily realizable, because the United States Constitution supported them. But thousands of African-Americans were jailed, intimidated, and beaten, and some were murdered, for agitating for those rights that are guaranteed by the Constitution but are only available to whites.
Eventually, Congress passed a civil rights bill and a voting rights bill, assuring us of those rights for which we had been agitating. By this time, however, more and more of us were realizing that our problems would not be solved by the enacting of these laws. In fact, these laws did not begin to speak to our problems. Our problems were an inherent part of the capitalist system and therefore could not be alleviated within that system.
The African-American masses had been outside the civil rights movement. For four years they watched to see if any significant changes would come from the nonviolent demonstrations—it became clear that nothing would change. In the summer of 1964, only a couple of weeks after the civil rights bill was passed, the first of what are now more than one hundred rebellions occurred. The following year, the same year that the voting rights bill was enacted, one of the largest rebellions occurred in Watts. These rebellions were violent uprisings in which African-Americans exchanged gunfire with police and army troops, burned down stores, and took from the stores those commodities that are rightfully ours—food and clothing that we had never had. These rebellions are increasing in intensity and frequency each year; now practically every major city has seen us rise to say, We will seize the day or be killed in the attempt.
We are moving to control our African-American communities as you are moving to wrest control of your countries, of the entire Latin continent, from the hands of foreign imperialist powers. There is only one course open to us: we must change North America so that the economy and politics of the country will be in the hands of the people, and our particular concern is our people, African-Americans. But it is clear that a community based on the community ownership of all resources could not exist within the present capitalist framework. For the total transformation to take place, whites must see the struggle that we’re engaged in as being their own struggle. At the present time, they do not. Even though the white worker is exploited, he sees his own best interest lying with the power structure. Because of the racist nature of this country, we cannot work in white communities, but we have asked those whites who work with us to go into their own communities to begin propagandizing and organizing. When the white workers realize their true condition, then alliances will be possible between ourselves and them.
But we cannot wait for this to happen, or despair if it does not happen. The struggle we are engaged in is international. We know very well that what happens in Vietnam affects our struggle here and what we do affects the struggle of the Vietnamese people. This is even more apparent when we look at ourselves not as African-Americans of the United States, but as African-Americans of the Americas. At the present moment, the power structure has sown the seeds of hate and discord between African-Americans and Spanish-speaking people in the large cities where they live. In the state of California, African-Americans and Spanish-speaking people together comprise almost 50 per cent of the population, yet the two view each other with suspicion and, sometimes, outright hostility. We recognize this as the old trick of “divide and conquer” and we are working to see that it does not succeed this time. Last week Puerto Ricans and blacks took the streets together in New York City to fight against the police—which demonstrates success in this area. Our destiny cannot be separated from the destiny of the Spanish-speaking people in the United States and of the Americas. Our victory will not be achieved unless they celebrate their liberation side by side with us, for it is not their struggle, but our struggle together. We have already pledged ourselves to do what we are asked to do to aid the struggle for the independence of Puerto Rico, to free it from domination by U.S. business and military interests; and we look upon Cuba as a shining example of hope in our hemisphere. We do not view our struggle as being contained within the boundaries of the United States as they are defined by present-day maps—instead, we look to the day when a true United States of America will extend from Tierra del Fuego to Alaska, when those formerly oppressed will stand together, a liberated people.
Our people are a colony within the United States, and you are colonies outside the United States. It is more than a figure of speech to say that the black communities in America are the victims of white imperialism and colonial exploitation—in practical economic and political terms it is true. There are over thirty million of us in the United States. For the most part we live in sharply defined sections of the rural black-belt areas and the shanty towns of the South, and more and more in the slums of the Northern and Western industrial cities. With us there are hundreds and thousands of Puerto Ricans, Mexican-Americans and American Indians. American cities are in essence populated by people of the Third World, while the white middle-class flees. The heart of commercial trade is in these cities—but though we live there, we do not control our resources. We do not control the land, the houses, or the stores. They are owned by whites who live outside the community.
Since 1966 the cry of the rebellions has been Black Power. This cry implies an ideology that the masses understand instinctively. It is because we are powerless that we are oppressed—and it is only with power that we can make the decisions governing our lives and our communities. Those who have power have everything; those who are without power have nothing. Without power we have to beg for what is rightfully ours. With power we will take our birthright because it was with power that our birthright was taken from us.
Black Power is more than a slogan; it is a way of looking at our problems and the beginning of a solution to them. It attacks racism and exploitation, the horns of the bull that seek to gore us.
The United States is a racist country. From its very beginning it has built itself upon the subjugation of colored people. To enslave another human being, one needs a justification, and the United States has always found this justification in proclaiming the superiority of whites and the inferiority of non-whites. We are called “niggers”; Spanish-speaking people are called “spies”; the Chinese, “chinks”; the Vietnamese, “gooks.” Dehumanizing people of color makes it just, in the mind of the white man, that we should be enslaved, exploited, and oppressed.
When a man himself can be convinced that he is inferior, it becomes even easier to keep that man a slave. How much easier to put a man in chains by making him believe he is inferior! As long as he does, he will keep himself in chains. As long as a slave allows himself to be defined as a slave by the master, he will be a slave, even if the master dies. This technique has been successfully practiced not only against us, but wherever people have been enslaved, oppressed and exploited. We can see it happening today in the schools of large American cities, where Puerto Rican and Mexican children are not allowed to speak Spanish and are taught nothing of their country and their history. It is apparent in many African countries, where one is not considered educated unless he has studied in France and speaks French.
Black power attacks this brainwashing by saying, We will define ourselves. We will no longer accept the white man’s definition of ourselves as ugly, ignorant, and uncultured. We will recognize our own beauty and our own culture, and we will no longer be ashamed of ourselves, for a people ashamed of themselves cannot be free.
Because our color has been used as a weapon to oppress us, we must use our color as a weapon of liberation, just as other people use their nationality as a weapon for their liberation. Black Power recognized that we are made to feel inferior so that we may be more easily exploited. But even if we destroyed racism, we would not necessarily destroy exploitation; and if we destroyed exploitation, we would not necessarily end racism. They must both be destroyed; we must constantly launch a two-pronged attack; we must constantly keep our eyes on both of the bull’s horns.
The true potential revolutionaries in this country are the people of color in the ghettos, those who have developed insurgence in the African-American and Latin communities, where past rebellions have taught important lessons in dealing with the governments’ armed reaction to our uprisings. In the past three years, there have been over one hundred uprisings in the internal colonies of the United States. No doubt these are reported to you as “minor disturbances initiated by a few malcontents”—but these are major rebellions with numbers of participants who are developing a consciousness of resistance. These rebellions should not be taken lightly.
It is with increasing concern that we see the United States will by any means necessary attempt to prevent the liberation struggles sweeping across the Third World, but in particular we know that the United States fears most the liberation struggle on this continent. In order to secure itself geographically, the United States must have Latin America, economically, politically, and culturally—it would not do for the Anglos to be isolated in a continent of hostiles.
Black Power not only addresses itself to exploitation, but to the problem of cultural integrity. Western society has always understood the importance of language to a people’s cultural consciousness and integrity. Wherever imperialism has gone, she has imposed her culture by force on other peoples, forcing them to adopt her language and way of life. When African slaves were brought to this country, the Anglo saw that if he took away the language of the African, he broke one of the bonds that kept blacks united and struggling. Africans were forbidden to speak to each other in their own language; if they were found doing so, they were savagely beaten. In Puerto Rico, where Yankee cultural imposition is at its height, English is taught in all high schools for three years, and Spanish is taught for two years.
Anglo society learned other valuable lessons from the enslavement of Africans in this country. If you separate a man’s family, as was done to the slaves, you again weaken his resistance. But carry the separation further. Take a few of the weaker slaves and treat them as house pets—the lighter-skinned slave, the offspring of the master’s rape of the African woman, was preferred. Give him the crumbs from the master’s table and cast-off clothing and soon he will fear to lose these small comforts. Then use his fears, get him to report on the activities of the bad slaves, report the impending revolts and uprisings. Create distrust and dissent among the Africans, and they will fight among themelves instead of uniting to fight their oppressors.
Today’s descendants of the African slaves brought to America have been separated from their cultural and national roots. Black children are not taught the glory of African civilization in the history of mankind; they are instead taught that Africa is “the dark continent,” inhabited by man-eating savages. They are not taught about the thousands of black martyrs who died resisting the white slave masters. They are not taught about the numerous uprisings and revolts, when hundreds of brave Africans refused to submit to slavery. Instead, their history books have “happy slaves singing in their fields . . . content with their new lives.” Those “few” slaves who did resist are called “troublemakers,” “malcontents,” or “crazy.”
Black children in North America grow up aspiring only to enter white society—not only because white society eats better, is housed and clothed better, and can make a better living, but also because they have been bombarded by the white-controlled communications media and educated by black teachers with white minds that white is better, white is beautiful. You need Anglo features, manner of speech, and aspirations, if you are to be successful, even within the black community. The white man hardly needs to police his colonies within this country, for he has plundered the cultures and enslaved the minds of the people of color until their resistance is paralyzed by self-hate.
An important fight in the Third World therefore is the fight for cultural integrity. Wherever Western society has gone, as Frantz Fanon tells us, she has imposed her culture through force. The people of a conquered country begin to believe that Western culture is better than their own. The young people begin to put aside the richness of their native culture to take on the tinsel of Western culture. They become ashamed of their roots, and inevitably they are trapped in a life of self-hate and private pursuit for self-gain. Thus does the West entrap whole peoples with little resistance. One of our major battles is to root out corrupt Western values, and our resistance cannot prevail unless our cultural integrity is restored and maintained.
It is from our people’s history, therefore, that we know our struggles and your struggles are the same. We have difficulty getting the information we need on what is happening in your countries. In so many ways we are illiterate—we don’t know of your heroes, your battles, and your victories. But we are working now to increase the consciousness of the African-American so it will extend internationally—and the United States fears this more than anything else.