the tradition of blaming the victim

[BeHereNow]

67. Are you familiar with the writing of Kwame Ture or Kwame Nkrumah?

"White America will not face the problem of color, the reality of it. The well-intended say: "We're all human, everybody is really decent, we must forget color." But color cannot be "forgotten" until its weight is recognized and dealt with. White America will not acknowledge that the ways in which this country sees itself are contradicted by being black - and always have been. Whereas most of the people who settled this country came here for freedom or economic opportunity, blacks were brought here to be slaves.

When the Lowndes County Freedom Organization chose the black panther as its symbol, it was christened by the press "the Black Panther Party" - but the Alabama Democratic Party, who symbol is a rooster, has never been called the White Cock Party. No one ever talked about "white power" because power in this country is white. All this adds up to more than merely identifying a group phenomenon by some catchy name or adjective. The furor over that black panther reveals the problem that white America has with color and sex; the furor over "Black Power" reveals how deep racism runs and the great fear which is attached to it.

Whites will not see that I, for example, as a person oppressed because of my blackness, have common cause with other blacks who are oppressed because of blackness. This is not to say that there are no white people who see things as I do, but that it is black people I must speak to first. It must be the oppressed to whom SNCC addresses itself primarily, not to friends from the oppressing group. From birth, black people are told a set of lies about themselves. We are told that we are lazy - yet I drive through the Delta area of Mississippi and watch black people picking cotton in the hot sun for fourteen hours. We are told, "If you work hard, you'll succeed" - but if that were true, black people would own this country. We are oppressed because we are black - not because we are lazy, not because we're stupid (and got good rhythm), but because we are black." KTure

http://www.panafricanperspective.com/kwamt.html

I think both writers well worth everyone's time, for different reasons.
I'm some how willing to bet they were never widely published in their time, at least not
here in the good ole'USA.

BHN







"While a racist social structure is not inherent in the colonial situation, it is inseparable from capitalist economic development. For race is inextricably linked with class exploitation in a racist-capitalist power structure, capitalist exploitation and race oppression are complementary; the removal of one ensures the removal of the other." "In the modern world, the race struggle has become part of the class struggle. In other words, wherever there is a race problem it has become linked with the class struggle Slavery and the master -servant relationship were therefore the cause, rather than the result of racism. The position was crystallized and reinforced with the discovery of gold and diamonds in South Africa, and the employment of cheap African labour in the mines. As time passed, it was thought necessary to justify the exploitation and oppression of African workers, the myth of racial inferiority was developed and spread.

"Each historical situation develops its own dynamics.. The close links between class and race developed in Africa alongside capitalist exploitation. Slavery, the master-servant relationship, and cheap labor were basic to it. The classic example is South Africa, where Africans experienced a double exploitation - both on the grounds of colour and of class.. Similar conditions exist in the USA, the Caribbean, in Latin America, and in other parts of the world where the nature of the development of productive forces has resulted in a racist class structures. In these areas, shades of colour count - the degree of blackness being a yardstick by which social status is measured class struggle." Class Struggle in Africa; Nkrumah