Beyond Rebellion
Originally published by The New York Times, September 23, 1972.
DETROIT—The black movement has gone through a number of stages in the last 15 years. First, there was the civil rights movement which reached a critical stage with the Birmingham confrontations of 1963, and which finally collapsed with the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Then, there has been the black power movement which began to rise with Malcolm in 1963–4; and which mushroomed into a national movement following the Watts uprising of 1965 and the Newark and Detroit rebellions of 1967.
Today we are still in the stage of trying to clarify what black power means. At the present time most “movement” people are still in the purely nationalist stage of black power. That is to say, most of those who call themselves black power advocates are trying to find a solution for blacks separate from a solution for the contradictions of the entire United States. Actually this is impossible. Therefore, many black nationalists are going off into all kinds of fantasies and dreams about what black power means — like heading for Africa, or isolating themselves in a few states, or whites just vanishing into thin air and leaving this country to blacks.
We have yet to come face to face with our contradiction that just as it has been on the backs of the black masses that this country has advanced economically, so it is only under the revolutionary political leadership of black people that this country will be able to get out of its contradictions. We are hesitant to face up to this truth because it is too challenging. We have the fear which always haunts the revolutionary social forces, the fear of not knowing whether they can win, the lack of confidence in themselves and in their ability to create a better society.
This is not a fear that is unique to blacks. All revolutionary social forces have this fear as they come face to face with their real conditions of life and the growing realization that they must assume the revolutionary responsibility of changing the whole society, so that their lives as well, as those of others in the society can be fundamentally changed. Because the task is so great, it becomes much easier to evade the tremendous challenge and responsibility for disciplined scientific thinking and disciplined political organization which are necessary to lead revolutionary struggle.
Confronted with this political choice, many of those who have been frustrated by the failure of the civil rights movement and the succeeding rebellions to solve all our problems have begun to put forward all kinds of fantastic ideas as to what we should now do. Some say we should separate and return to Africa. Some say we should separate but should remain here and try to build a new black capitalist economy from scratch inside the most advanced and powerful capitalist economy in the world! Some say we should join the Pan‐African movement of the African peoples in Africa and build a military base in Africa from which we will eventually be able to attack the U.S.A.
Others say we should just struggle for survival from day to day, doing whatever has to be done for survival. And finally, others have just given up struggling for anything at all, and have turned to astrology or drugs or religion in the old‐time belief that some metaphysical force out there in the twilight zone will rescue us from our dilemma.
We have to examine all these theories realistically and scientifically —whatever their origin and whosoever is proposing them—whether they are our friends or our relatives; whether or not they are old comrades with whom we have demonstrated and gone to jail in the past; whether or not we admire them for their past deeds or for their charismatic personalities or because they make us feel good when we hear them rapping against “the man.” All these personal considerations are irrelevant measured against the real miseries of our present conditions in this country and the real future which we must create for ourselves and our posterity in this country. We live in this country, our labors have laid the foundation for the growth of this country. Our contradictions are rooted in this country's unique development and can only be resolved by struggles under our leadership to eliminate the roots of these contradictions in this country.
As we look at our communities, looking more and more each day like wastelands and fortresses, as we look at our younger brothers and sisters scrambling and nodding on the streets of our communities, as we think of the children whom we will be bringing into this world—we cannot just grab on to any ideas of liberation just because they are being pushed by old friends of ours or because they give us an emotional shot in the arm.
We can start by categorically rejecting astrology, drugs, religion, black capitalism, separatism and also all those messianic complexes that someone else or we ourselves are going to become “the leader” whom the black masses are waiting for, to lead them out of the wilderness of their oppression. In other words, we can start by turning our backs on all the various escape routes by which many people are still traveling, in the vain hope that somehow they can evade grappling with the real contradictions of this country, this society.
