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Background The movement for Black Power in the U.S. came during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Many members of SNCC, among them Stokely Carmichael, were becoming critical of the nonviolent approach to racism and inequality articulated and practiced by King, the NAACP and other moderates, and rejected desegregation as a primary objective. SNCC's membership was generally younger and than that of the other Big Five civil rights organizations, and became increasingly more militant and outspoken over time. 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 "accommodationist" civil rights strategies had failed to secure sufficient concessions for blacks. As a result, as the Civil Rights Movement progressed, increasingly radical, more militant voices came to the fore to aggressively challenge white hegemony. Increasing numbers of black youth, particularly, had come to reject the moderate path of cooperation, integration and assimilation of their elders. They rejected the notion of appealing to the public's conscience and religious creeds and took the tack articulated by another black activist more than a century before. Abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote: Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. ...Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did and it never will. 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 historically have fought to protect their lands, cultures and freedoms from European colonialists, and that to seek to integrate into a society that has stolen one's people and their wealth is more than the Marxist critique of "uniting with imperialism"; it is 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 — 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. Audio/Video "Rethinking the Black Power Movement" From the Black Studies Lecture Series, Fairfield University, February 16, 2006 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. See also Compare Further reading | ||||||||||
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