Thursday, June 15, 2006

Food for thought

"... We were just learning how silly it was for them to have us running around fighting against racism. 'Racism' is based on the centrality of white people. It's a bit of self-aggrandizement by white people that says that you're supposed to just fight to integrate with them, which is nonsense.

Racism is the ideology of imperialism. Racism is the ideas in the brain of white people. What we had to fight for was power, so that no matter what was in the brains of white people, they couldn't mess with us. 'Black power! Black power!' That was an anti-colonial demand.

No place on the planet do they demand that people fight against racism except for us. They didn't say to the Vietnamese, 'You have got to fight against racism.' They didn't say to the Nicaraguans, 'You have got to fight against racism.' The only people they tell to fight against racism are Africans, both here and in Africa.

In other words, fight to make your enemy like you. Isn't that what they say? What's the solution to your problem? 'Integrate.' Look how illogical that is. If the solution is integration, the assumption is that there used to be a time when everybody was all together. Then somebody came and separated us from white people. So we can make it all better if we just integrate again.

That's nonsense! Our struggle is for power. They have us fighting to be accepted by a lyncher, by a slave master. If you are fighting to be accepted, you can't even hit your enemy back. They don't have to have the police. They can slap you upside the head and do anything they want. You can't do anything because if you hit him back, he won't like you and you won't be accepted.

You hear me? It's nothing but treachery. They have a mode of logic at work in our community that is a vicious terrible trap treating us like we are not even human. Even a dog would bite somebody who continuously attacked it, but we couldn't do that because they taught us we were supposed to be fighting against racism..."

-Omali Yeshitela, on Black Power versus Anti-Racism

3 comments:

Rae said...

what the hell is 'Black Power'? Isn't that statement separation of a particular race and thus in itself racist? Foolishness.

The Seeker said...

Boy this 'Omali Yeshitela' is one profound induvidual.
Racism is a touchy subject. Its more grey than we realize.

Persoanaly I have allways thought, that If roles were reversed we would be doing the same thing to the whites, exploit them and devise ways and means to keep them subserviant, its the way of the human.

Anonymous said...

Excellent, love it!
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