Page 32 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

CHAPTER II
The Development of
African American Nationalism
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the op-
pressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
Power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, 1
because power, real power, comes from conviction, which produces action, uncompro-
mising action. It also produces insurrection against oppression.This is the only way you
end oppression—with power.
—Malcolm X 2

3
lack nationalism, as an ideological, intellectual, political, and cultural manifes-
tation of the African American movement, aimed to challenge American racist
Bcapitalist structures and to redefine the relationship between Black and White
Americans so that American apartheid could be dismantled and Black America could
be liberated and developed. It developed in opposition to White racial and colonial
domination, cultural hegemony, exploitation, and poverty.This nationalism manifested
itself in three overlapping forms: cultural, reformist and revolutionary.Too much em-
phasis has been given to its reformist aspect, which is the Civil Rights movement, and
the cultural and revolutionary aspects of this movement have been suppressed by the
media, politicians, and scholars ideologically, politically, and intellectually.The primary
focus on the Civil Rights movement, without integrating it with cultural and revolu-
tionary aspects of this nationalism, has limited our understanding of the Black national
movement and its main objectives. The Black struggle for freedom had different
forms, ideologies, tactics, and strategies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 4
Over the past 35 years, scholars have dichotomized Black nationalism and the Civil
Rights movement by focusing on their strategic and ideological differences and by ig-
noring the shared objectives of the Black freedom and development movements.
5
6
Scholars such as Howard Brotz and Harold Cruse originated this dichotomizing ten-
dency by emphasizing civil rights activism and separately focusing on Black national-
ism, assuming that these were not related and not aspects of a single African American