It is an interesting time in America when it comes to race. Currently in the news, we see officer after officer go uncharged for the death of a black men. Not too long ago, we saw riots and protests in both Ferguson and Baltimore as a resistance towards police violence against African American people. Americans can see the people of African descent that live here caught in an eternal purgatory poverty and imprisonment.
People of African descent encounter an appalling amount of racial profiling and even worse, people who deny that these things exist. Currently the Black Lives Matter movement strives hard to convince the majority of the white American populace that racism is alive today and results in many of these aforementioned occurrences. Unfortunately, (although I do not find this unexpected) these attempts are ruthlessly criticized and have reactions that show what is quite frankly a clear misunderstanding of the goals of the movement such as All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter.
In short, we have a race problem in this country. And for black people it will not be solved by raising awareness in any community but our own.
This brings me to the black power movement. The widespread usage of the term came from a speech from a man named Kwame Toure while he was involved in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. The term became associated with a movement following the civil rights movement that fought against aspects of America's racism that were not as easily seen as segregation. The Black Panther Party of Self Defense was a manifestation of this movement that, guided by the doctrine of socialism, empowered black people throughout the United States, and recognized the economic effects that systemic racism had on the black community. They set up health services, education services and free breakfast programs for children. They installed such a sense of strength and resilience and revolutionary fervor that the United States government launched their COINTELPRO program in order to destroy the party. Crazy, I know, but that high point when Black Power was a popular phrase and spirits were high an important lesson existed. True freedom comes from the inside. True freedom come from self-empowerment and resistance to oppressive hierarchies. Even in the face of great adversity, a community is strongest when it builds itself up and fights back against forces that seek to bring it down.
Assata Shakur, a major figure in the Black Power movement, wrote in her autobiography, "Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them."
The reason why this bit of history is so important today, is that it taught a revolutionary strategy of self-strength and resistance. It's time that African American people as a whole stand together once again with resilience against oppressors. The great walls of racism and economic disparity will fall when met with a strong stance against it.
