Why Have We Become A Nation of Sheep? – Musings of A Movement Veteran

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.

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.