Black Power

I’ll keep this one short. As a white American sympathetic to the black American experience, I have always seen and understood “Black Power” to be a rallying cry - a call for resistance, solidarity, and ultimately the liberation of the Black community from White oppression. And some part of me still relates to this.

But the better part of me, I think, now reads the words “Black Power” for what they are: a minority group’s direct expression of their stated desire. And because I am extremely skeptical of both Groups and Power, it is hard for me to support the use of such a statement, even if I understand why it exists, sympathize with its creators, and empathize with the Black American experience.

The truth is that Power corrupts, and if you worship Power, you will come to abuse it, regardless of which Group you identify with - White, Black, Gay, Trans, Nickleback fans, whatever. Similar to White Guilt, which I wrote about yesterday, Black Power is another mindtrap.

The way out of the trap is to set your sights on the liberation of all people from oppression - an impossible goal, but the only stated desire that won’t destroy you if you pursue it to its logical end. Many influential authors and activists in the Black community know this and have known it for decades if not centuries.1 But as DFW said, the trick is to keep it up-front in daily consciousness.

“Black Power” as a cry to freedom I can get behind. Black Power as a mission statement I cannot.

Footnotes

  1. Morgan Freeman, Gill Scott-Heron, Howard Thurman, the list goes on and on. The best of us, regardless of skin tone, understand that skin tone is simply a variable used by in-groups to divide and enable oppression. ↩