Page 47 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

•
Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
38
levels,”Anthony Smith writes,“and may be regarded as a form of culture as much as
110
a species of political ideology and social movement.”
Based on their own economic
and cultural resources, African American nationalists recognized and emphasized the
beauty of their blackness, the richness of their African and American traditions, and
their stamina under the most deplorable and cruel racist system. Despite the fact that
the ghetto has been the center of poverty and underdevelopment in affluent America,
it brought Blacks together as an ethnonational community to build African American
111
With the great migration the char-
institutions, organizations, and cultural centers.
112
As we will see shortly,through Pan-African-
acter of Black culture was transformed.
ism, the Garvey Movement, and the Harlem Renaissance, African American culture
started to reflect national and international characteristics.
The African American people widely formed their own geographical and social
communities by creating institutions that became the fountains from which African
American nationalism developed. African American nationalism had unleashed the
potential, power, and humanity of the Black people who were suppressed by the
American racial caste system.This nationalism “as a refutation of the racial ideology of
slavery and segregation,” James Turner writes, “is a direct challenge to white su-
113
Collective grievances, political and economic modernization, urbaniza-
premacy.”
tion, the expansion of independent institutions and organizations, and the
consolidation of an educated class facilitated the development of Black nationalism.
This nationalism manifested itself in three overlapping and interconnected forms.
Three Forms of African American Nationalism
Black nationalism cumulatively raised three important interrelated objectives: the redefi-
nition of Black cultural identity, the liberation of Blacks from the racial caste system, and
the economic,the political,and cultural transformation of the Black community.The ob-
jectives of Black nationalism manifested themselves in three overlapping historical forms
that can be analytically separated.The first form of African American nationalism was
manifested in cultural revitalization.The second form of this nationalism dealt with the
issues of racial equality, citizenship rights, and social justice.This aspect of the Black na-
tional movement is popularly known as the Civil Rights movement.The third form of
African American nationalism went beyond civil rights issues and attempted to address
economic, political, and cultural rights that would allow the Black people to determine
their historical destiny as people.This was the aspect of revolutionary nationalism.
Because of the suppression of the cultural and revolutionary aspects of African
American nationalism and the lack of long-term cultural and political strategies for
the Black community, the questions of cultural self-determination and economic de-
velopment have not been adequately addressed in the literature on Black nationalism.
The cultural and revolutionary forms of Black nationalism must not be ignored, since
they in fact facilitated the legal success of the Civil Rights movement.The cultural
and revolutionary aspects of Black nationalism were the powerhouses of the African
American struggle.Without a cultural base there cannot be nationalism, and without
militant revolutionaries there cannot be a fundamental social change since the domi-
nant society always wants to maintain the status quo.Therefore, it is superficial to talk
only about the Civil Rights movement without addressing both the cultural and rev-
olutionary forms of the African American movement. Let us specifically look at the
three forms of African American movement.