During the
Sixties, young black men and women clenched their fists and,
responding
to the question “What time is it?” energetically, boisterously
and in unison, answered: “It’s nation time!” So it went
back then …continuous queries and exhortations - and always
the answer was the same: “It’s Nation time!”
Perhaps, without
consciously being aware of the inherent historical modality
of our behavior,
the passionate and emotion-laden response was in keeping
with the Black tradition of “call and response.” Yes, ours
was not only a “political moment” in those days but a “spiritual
and ancestral” one as well; one that swelled us all with
pride. Few, I believe can argue, even retrospectively, against
the notion that during those hectic days there was a commitment
by the young to the liberation of our people from the tyranny
and oppression heaped upon African people by those who ruled
the nation. Indeed History tells us that those who governed
feared what they believed was an inevitable revolution and,
surreptitiously, embarked on a strategy to destroy those
who would make revolution.
So,” What time was it?” … It
was nation time.
Today that
question is rarely, if ever, asked. And, I suspect, that were it to be posed
to an aging activist of yesteryear who, nostalgically remembering
those days of sacrifice, pain and yes, death, would dare
to raise his frail arms and answer “It’s Nation time!?” Sadly,
more than likely, after the question was posed, the only
other answer he would hear would be the emptiness of silence.
My concern
is that the concept of a Black Nation within the Nation has
all but disappeared – vanished,
as if white America had successfully exorcised a demon that
ate at its entrails. The vision of a chocolate-colored necklace
of cities strewn across America, controlled and governed
by Black folks, a concrete expression of Black Nationalism,
is now no more. It has, seemingly, been seduced by the monsters
of materialism, the programmed pursuit of individual aggrandizement,
and the facile acceptance of the socio-cultural hegemony
of white America. It may not be too farfetched to suggest
that we, as a nation of Black people, may well have, collectively,
become a newer, slightly different edition, not of Ellison’s “The
Invisible Man” but of something entirely new: an invisible
people - a self-imposed non-political presence in America.
Sadly, one
no longer hears the call or the response of yesteryear. Instead,
ringing
from the rafters of athletic fields, as Black men and women
win medals for the nation in which they were once held in
physical and now psychological bondage, one hears the cry “U.S.A.” …. “U.S.A.,” as
if the athletes on the field - and their families and friends
in the stands - were indeed equal members of the white nation.
In truth,
many of the Black voices of yesterday were silenced by J.
Edgar Hoover’s counter
intelligence program, a program of “dirty tricks” designed
to cause havoc among Black and progressive groups. It did
not matter to Hoover that his fabricated lies and misinformation
caused the death of a number of young Blacks who were deemed “sell
outs” enemies, and traitors by those who believed the fabrications
placed by Hoover’s agents in their midst. For a time, it
was almost impossible to say who worked for the government
and who did not because there was a shadow hovering over
the movement, an ominous portent of the present and the future
- the shadow of Hoover’s program of death, deceit, and destruction.
Were we wrong
then? Are we wrong now for still believing that black people
comprise
a nation whose History and culture must be kept and nurtured? Is
it possible for Black people to be subsumed within the fabric
of the American cultural motif and not lose a sense of self,
of functional presence, of identity? If so, is it desirable?
Conversely, is it possible or desirable for Black people
to have a center of independent power within the paradigm
of the American power structure and might? Were the young
of yesterday simply naive, apolitical dreamers, yearning
for something that could never be - namely mastery and control
over their lives - economically, politically, and culturally? After
all, Frederick Douglass had taught us, and so, too, did Malcolm,
that the struggle is about power! But is power possible without
a separate economic, political and social base?
Dr. King,
during those tempestuous times, spoke about “love” and about “Agape” and the imperative
of a “Beloved Community.” But the question, then and now,
remains: without power over self, without economic, political
and social justice, can love or agape or the Beloved Community
be possible?
I suspect
that for those who wonder if those who once enslaved us and
who presently
are still in control of the citadels of power can be persuaded
that it is in their self-interest to realign and redistribute
the existing vectors of power, the answer would be a resounding
yes! But this aging warrior of yesterday would respectfully
differ with that perspective. Because History has taught
me that power is never given. It has to be taken, essentially,
as Malcolm preached, “It is the ballot or the bullet.”
“Power concedes nothing
without a demand. It never has and it never will” so said
Frederick Douglass. Thus, to expect those who once physically
enslaved us - and who have historically held and know the
meaning and use of power - to suddenly give up their power
because of a demand that was made by former slaves and progressive
elements of their own ethnic and social stock, for me, without
some force behind it, is a naive and foolhardy delusion.
Is Agape -
unconditional love - desirable? Is the “Beloved Community” desirable?
The answer is a resounding affirmative! This is especially
true
if one believes in a Creator and the existence of a commonality
of goodness in the nature of humankind. But is it possible?
On that, the jury, some of us think, is still out.
On the surface,
the answer to our other propositions, the chocolate-covered
cities strewn
across the nation, a group of states in the South as an independent
nation within a nation, given the historical reality of that
day and the subsequent victory of those who ruled the country,
is that we may have been naive … Land would not be won by
rhetoric alone. The powerful would never partition their
base of power simply because it was morally right and proper,
as some had argued: “If you cannot live with us, then give
us some land here in America… Let us separate ourselves…” Those
of us who, at that time, so believed, did not fully understand
the nature of the beast.
The challenges
were too great to overcome. David could not Goliath slay.
The young
who raised their fists, clamoring for a land to call their
own, some would
say were, perhaps, another version of young David. However,
these latter day “Davids” did not have a “sling-shot” and
perhaps, more importantly, did not have a people behind them
to continue the fight when, or if, they were felled. Neither,
it is argued, did they hear the voice of “the Lord.” Instead,
some would suggest that they heard the voice of “De Lawd” in
Martin Luther King, who spoke of the negativity of violence.
Some suggested
then that Martin too was mesmerized and blinded by the might
of the
material and physical strength of the empire. But History
would prove that those who so believed were wrong because
it is virtually unchallengeable that while “De Lawd," as
he was sometimes pejoratively called, preached non-violence,
he stood tall against the violence perpetrated by those who
desired an American Empire and who viciously unleashed an
array of deadly and toxic weapons against Vietnam, only to
be forced by the changing times, the loss of American lives,
the will of the Vietnamese people, and the immorality of
their actions, to abandon, if only temporarily, their quest
for a New American Century.
Dr. King believed in the
moral imperative of non-violence and paid with his life for
challenging the empire builders. He had offered a special
of kind of strength that was honed in a belief system of
moral authority transcending the here and the now. Yet the
people for whom he fought cowered and hid like frightened
sheep, fearing their slaughter at the hands of the contemporary
Goliath. They succumbed by disowning their young, their many
Davids and permitted those whom Goliath defended to poison
the minds and the bodies of their offspring and themselves
with toxins that served to quench their thirst for freedom
and mastery over selves while making them crave for the poison
and the material pacifier placed in their mouths by the masters
of the new plantations.
Soon all that
was heard, and has continued to be heard, was the whimpering
compliant
voices of a new brand of leadership, more like the noisome
braying of sheep en route to the slaughter. At times, there
is not even a sound of defiance, only the shuffling of feet
and a smile of compliance as they drink the masters’ wine
and eat his poisoned meat. This “leadership” is deadly reminiscent
of what Dr. King, in another context, i.e., in his “Letter
From a Birmingham Jail,” called “a spirit of do-nothingness.”
Now, can/should
the aging warriors of yesterday accept that behavior?” Definitely
not! And, are they, because of the absence of strong and
clear
voices, being forced to re-enter the field of combat - that
is, if they ever did abandon the struggle? Who knows?
As one looks at the diminishing
sense of nationhood among Black folks, one hopes that it
still exists in the psyche of the contemporary young, at
least as a call for cohesiveness, for solidarity, for a planned
and disciplined offensive strategy against the ongoing actions
of our collective oppressors. On the other hand, one feels
blinded by the darkness and emptiness of the present condition
of contemporary Black leadership among the young.
Today one
is bombarded by an unbridled and unparalleled ostentatious
attempt to promote
individual worth by using one’s hue to amass and flaunt new-
found wealth. Many, in so doing, attempt to escape the same
Blackness that got them there. Some lash out at those who
view their present behavior as negativistic, atavistic and
anti the historical struggle waged by so many Blacks to transform
America. They say that today is a new day, that those Blacks
who challenge them do not have an understanding of the culture
of today’s youth. Those older Blacks, these new “voices” suggest, “have
become nay sayers and irrelevant to the times.”
Some contemporary
Black academicians of this generation, cut from the same
cloth
as these "new" so-called "voices" have
even used their standing to extol the virtues of those who
today - contrary to the youth of yesterday who defied dogs,
water hoses, went to jail and even died, who raised their
fists, cried “Black Power,” and asked, “What time is it?” -
sing praisesongs to themselves and to a system of entrenched
power that still eats away at “the soul of black folks.”
Those these
new Academicians attempt to have us accept, as they seek
a buyer for their
book or an appearance on National Television as contemporary
newsmakers of the Academy, are young men and women who defame
our women and our people in search of the “bling bling” bought
by the almighty dollar. What makes it so difficult to comprehend
is the fact that the “truth” is there for all to see, naked
before our very eyes, were we to look. Simply put, those
who really profit from the profanity, misogyny and the misuse
of the term “Black culture” are those who control the music
industry. So little is there to embrace that what they hype
as “Black culture” is nothing more than “Black decadence.”
We, the aging warriors of
yesterday, may have become irrelevant, but a great number
of those who now disdain the struggles of the past and seemingly
feverishly hold on to the ring of the cash register as the
sound of freedom will soon find that their sense of freedom
is a new form of captivity that, in the long run, is fleeting
and empty, without the connection to the larger sense of
social transformation, justice and peace.
No longer
do we cry “Black
Power” … No longer do we ask, “What time is it?” So if we
are not careful, says this aging activist, we are in danger
of rapidly becoming, if we are not there already, a growing
nation of pseudo-white people….“Wannabees” who are partners
in the back pocket of a vacuous and empty American Empire.
History tells us that, in
the end, all empires fall.
Carlos E. Russell, PhD is Professor
Emeritus C.U.N.Y. - Brooklyn College. In the sixties,
he served as an Associate Editor of the Liberator magazine.
As such, he was one of
the first to interview Malcolm X after he left the Nation.
He is best remembered as the founder of Black Solidarity
Day in New York in 1969 and as the Chair of the Black Caucus
of the Conference on New Politics in 1967. In addition, he
was a consultant to Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. during the
planning for the Poor
Peoples March. Excerpts of his participation can be seen
in Citizen
King and Eyes
on the Prize (PBS Mini Series Boxed Set).
Born in the Republic of Panama he has served as that country's
representative to the U.N and the O.A.S. with the rank of
Ambassador. He has also served as the nightly host of "Thinking
it Through" a talk show that was aired on WLIB in New
York. He is a playwright and poet as well. Click
here to contact Dr. Russell.