In this essay, John Wight talks about Black Power and the leaders who led it in the 60’s. They had huge impact but now “the very idea of Black liberation, would appear to be extinct.”
What happened? I think it was a lot of things. Some Blacks did move into the middle class (and higher, look at Oprah.) Rage does get tempered when one’s living conditions demonstrably improve. This hardly happened to all Blacks, but hey, back in the 60’s who would have thought that, four decades later,there would be Black billionaires and quite probably a Black president. No one, that’s who. But for too many, conditions seem scarcely improved. Just look at New Orleans and Katrina.
Saul Alinksy was right when, in the 60’s, he said it was idiocy for the Panthers to say all power grows out of the barrel of a gun when the other side has all the guns. If you yell “Off the pigs” long enough, law enforcement will probably take you way more seriously than you might have supposed.
The Black Power movement had a major influence on the political world at large, one that is still echoing. They brought millions to radical political consciousness, and for a while, the whole world was watching. Their legacy is still with us.
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Whatever happened To Black Power?
When analyzing and comparing the ferment of the US political landscape during the sixties and seventies, the years of the anti-Vietnam war and Black civil rights movements, to the political landscape in the US today, perhaps the most striking thing is the absence of Black militant voices calling not only for integration into the political system but a change in the system itself.
At certain periods of the sixties and seventies it seemed as if the US was on the verge of a social explosion which threatened to overturn and bring down at long last a white establishment which had held the levers of economic and political power since the nation was founded.
A Black liberation movement arose in tandem with the civil rights and antiwar movements, comprising those who believed that the non-violent and reformist civil rights movement, led by Dr Martin Luther King, would effect no meaningful social change in the plight of America’s Black population, which at that time numbered around 22 million (11 percent of the population). Blacks occupied the bottom rung of the economic ladder, as they had done since slavery was formally abolished in 1865; they comprised the majority of the nation’s prison population, occupied the worst housing, comprised the lowest number of college graduates, had the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of infant mortality - in general scored worst in every social indicator.
Today, in the year 2008, the Black population of the United States is around 35 million (13 percent of the population). Blacks occupy the bottom rung of the economic ladder, as they have done since slavery was formally abolished in 1865; they comprise the majority of the nation’s prison population, occupy the worst housing, comprise the lowest number of college graduates, have the lowest life expectancy, the highest rate of infant mortality – in general Blacks in America today score worst in every social indicator (The Poor In Developed Countries – 2007).
Yet, whilst the social conditions of Blacks in America remains virtually the same today as a generation ago, no militant Black movement has grown in response. In fact, to all intents and purposes the Black liberation movement, indeed the very idea of Black liberation, would appear to be extinct.
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