Title: Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History
Author: Robert L. Allen
Year of Publication: 1990 [1969]
Thesis: Black people are a colonized people within the U.S.; Anger
Time: 1930s-1960s
Geography: U.S. and some
Organization:
Introduction:
- Rebellion or revolution? - this question faces the resistance
- "domestic colonialism" is what is happening - not a "race problem." - Race problem is assimilationist / domestic colonialism addresses the institutions that are structured to keep oppressed people oppressed.
- If no right of revolution, then you really don't have anything
- Larger contradictions = greater possibility for violence.
- Harold Cruse talked about domestic colonialism
- Malcom X saw the connection - the fight as international (didn't the CRM folks, too?)
Uses Ghana as example of neocolonialism - bloodless coup & also outside control of cocoa exports by controlling prices
Gov't & corporate entities co-opt black power by making black power & black capitalism synonymous
II - The Social Context of Black Power
- Ford Foundation & Black Power - attempt to infiltrate
- John Lewis - speech censored (24)
- MFDP loses because national democratic party sides with the racist Mississippi party
- Urban rebellions happen against people who Black people perceive are ripping them off (28)
- Robert Williams scares folks because armed Blacks meant no more monopoly on violence
- Williams saves a white couple & then gets accused of kidnapping. Flees
- Malcom X - Black Nationalism & self-determination come together (32)
- Malcom also links capitalism & racism together (32)
- & neocolonialism - he offers some form of socialism as a way out of this.
- Malcom suspects "other people" as Muslims apparently had limitations (39 - also see: http://www.ep.tc/realist/73/index.html)
- Ho Chi Minh visits U.S. and critiques racism against Black people
- Wow - Eisenhower - statement on p44 on reality of getting stuff from Vietnam
- Carmichael "torn between reformism and revolution" (46)
- White corporate America courts black elite to calm down the situation.
- Carmichael's definition of Black Power: "the coming together of black people to elect representatives and to force those representatives to speak to their needs." (50)
- Blacks should recognize themselves as an ethnic group - p.50 - said by MANY authors - see this page.
- Discusses the impossibility of investing in the Black community as a solution (52)
- CORE splits over separation or integration as a goal.
- White establishment responds not to "Black Power" slogan but to continuing conditions of impoverishment (70)
- Ford Foundation acts as an experimental vanguard for later government intervention
- Bundy's "double assertion" (p78) of seemingly contradictory policies - see article: "The End of either/Or"
- Rustin's objection to Black militantism
- Bourgeois vs. poor African Americans - CORE & BPP highlight this split in the Black Power Movement (though doesn't the BPP also eventually come into the fold?)
- Even Black Power folks saw this as reform vs. redesign. Therefore search for a remedy. (p.50-ish)
- BP as a political definition
--Segregated schools in Harlem fight.
- ***BP Party demands actually is an attempt to spell out the meaning of Black Power
III - Black Nationalism
- Discusses the ideas of integration or separation. Emigration takes the stage in the early part of this chapter
- DuBois' limitation is his affinity for Marxism (preventing him from going full Black nationalist)
- Washington's alignment with powerful whites prevented his doing the same
- DuBois and Washington come out of the exodus based on lynching and disfranchisement; Garvey comes from the 1915-1919 out migration (100)
- WOW! Free Huey campaign influenced by lawyer on Scottsboro case
- Describes M/C Blacks as only turning to Black nationalism after their integrationist dreams have been shunned by white society (119-120)
- p125 is incredible - essentially that it makes sense that we look at cultural & religious movements as hopeful because there is no possibility of a revolution (when it happened, it was the 1930s and labor quickly got brought into supporting white supremacy
- Urban rebellion recuperates Black nationalism from the fantasy of cultural/religious ideas
IV - Black Power and Bourgeois Black Nationalism
- Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) brokers peace & foments self government
V. Corporate Imperialism vs. Black Liberation
VI. Black Radicals: Rhetoric and Reality
VII. Conclusion: Toward a Transitional Program
- DuBois - notes that economic incentives in a racial framework contribute to the persistence of racism. (275)
- Again DuBois - argues not for separatism, but for democracy within economic relations (275)
- Black people then needed their own capital (independent of white sources) (277)
- Points out DuBois doesn't get through the issue of how to capitalize such a venture (278)
- Harold Cruse joins this idea later, prescribing Black intellectuals/middle-class would play a role in this (Harlem) (278)
- Allen - major problem is corporate capitalism - what was necessary didn't exist then & doesn't exist now, though it doesn't mean Black people shouldn't strive for this (278)
- Allen points out BPP program as one good example (278)
- Issues with creating allies - even "white collar" jobs facing automation, so difficult to organize (282) & broad international wealth gap (283)
Bibliography
Index
Type:
Methods:
Sources:
Historiography:
Keywords:
Colonialism
"direct and over-all subordinatio of one people, nation, or country to another with state power in the hands of the dominating power.
Black Power
- Carmichael's definition of Black Power: "the coming together of black people to elect representatives and to force those representatives to speak to their needs." (50)
Themes:
This work is aligned with Anibal Quijano & Grosfoguel on coloniality of power (which he defines as neoliberalism
Critiques:
Questions:
Would very poor people in the U.S. be described as colonized as well?
Would Robert Allen agree with the shift from BPP to shift into political system?
Would David Walker be a millenarian movement?
Who gets looted when looting happens? (see quote p134)
Why would it be so important for urban rebellions to be made to seem illogical? (then you don't have to listen to anyone or concede anything - not the need and not any people-generated solution)
Quotes:
"If, however, blacks started arming, even if only for purposes of self-defense, then this was another matter altogether. For an unjust social system can exist only by maintaining a monopoly on available force." (28)
"The fact that most of SNCC's staff come out of such a background makes it easier to comprehend and account for the ideological waverings were reflective of the insecurity and equivocation of the black middle class, which SNCC in a sense represented." (47)
“Reforms are ends in themselves when implemented by the poewr structure, but whne implemented by the ordinary working people of the black community, through an independent black political party, reforms can become one means to the creation of a revolutionary society. The critical qustion is who, or more specifically, what class controls the making of reforms, and for what purpose? (88)
"Pan-Africanism was anti-colonial, anti-imperialist in conception and purpose, and no mere cultural movement. DuBois and the African George Padmore are the acknowledged fathers of African nationalism, and DuBois could hardly be that without having been, in some measure, himself a black nationalist." (98)
"Does black nationalism exist only at certain historical junctures, or is it always there like the subterranean stresses which precede and earthquake?" (115)
"In addition to its historical origins, this white hostility also grows out of one of the hard facts of American economic life--that there is insufficient productive space in the American economy for twenty million black people. This is one reason why white workers today are among the worst bigots and racists. They know that their jobs, and consequently their economic security, are directly threatened by integration efforts. On the other hand, black workers cannot help but become increasingly conscious of the fact that the American economy is structured to preclude their full participation." (115)
Religious mysticism as natural outcome of inability to have a full-scale revolution, but also its importance in terms of "laying the basis"
"In this light the religious mysticism of the Black Mus lims and the fantastic dreams of other traditional black nationalists now become understandable. The Muslims prophesied the coming of an Apocalypse in which the white man would be destroyed and die black man en throned as ruler of the world. Other nationalists long for a return “home” to Africa, or hope fervently that America will see fit to grant black people a separate territory within the United States. The Western mind would label all of this as clearly irrational. But this obscures the contention that these nationalist sects are the prototypes which are laying the basis for a genuinely revolutionary movement." (125)
"There was no formal organization to the looting. It was a spontaneous outbreak. Black people were simply doing what they knew had to be done. Although there was no organization, the looting was not without logic. White-owned stores, the most visible mechanism of black exploitation, were the main targets of looters and arsonists. There were no attacks on "'soul brother" businesses. However, many of these would later be demolished by police and National Guardsmen." (134)
On what won't work:
"Black people cannot afford the social injustices of capitalism. They cannot afford a system which creates privileged classes within an already super exploited and underprivileged community. They cannot afford a system which organizes community resources and then distributes the resulting wealth in a hierarachical fashion, with those who need least getting most. Neither can black people afford some half-hearted compromise which would make the black community in general, and its educated classes in particular, subservient to the expansionist needs of corporate capitalism. Of course, capital must be accumulated to make possible the economic development of the black community, but this must be done in a way that precludes the enrichment of one class at the expense of those below it." (275)
On areas of class difference in Black communities:
"Of course, the party should seek also to encompass, in sofar as this is possible, the entire black population. Black intellectuals and members of the black middle class should be encouraged to participate—as individuals. However, because of the inherent ambivalence of these classes, they must not be allowed, as classes, to assume leadership of the party. As classes, intellectuals and petty bourgeois blacks are as likely to be reactionary as they are to be revolutionary, and for this reason they must always be some what suspect." (279)
On the need for white people to grow and change:
"Black liberation, however, will not come about solely through the activities of black people. Black America cannot be genuinely liberated until white America is transformed into a humanistic society free of exploitation and class division. The black and white worlds, although separate and distinct, are too closely intertwined—geo graphically, politically, and economically—for the social maladies of one not to affect the other. Both must change if either is to progress to new and liberating social forms. " (281)
Issues with separatism:
"But neither should black people deceive themselves into thinking that sim ple separation from oppressive white society will solve the problem. Blacks and whites here have lived in separate worlds for four centuries, but this was hardly an economic or political boon to black people. In the quest for black liberation, white society cannot be ignored or cast aside with a sigh of relief. It must be changed. Otherwise, the racism and exploitative social relations which characterize that society will defeat even the best efforts of black free dom fighters. This is one of the clearest lessons of the black experience in America." (281)
What white radicals can do:
"White radicals, too, are helpful, despite their small numbers, because they are what might be termed a “leading minority”: they are capable of initiating skirmishes, which then mobilize thou sands of non-radical whites. Witness the antiwar move ment, which started with a handful and grew to include hundreds of thousands." (282)
Notes: