Black Nationalism : The Victims Of White Brutality

“I began thinking about the fact that I stand in the middle of two opposing forces in the Negro community. One is a force of complacency, made up in part of Negroes who, as a result of long years of oppression, are so drained of self-respect and a sense of ‘somebodiness’ that they have adjusted to segregation; and in part of a few middle class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some ways they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses. The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups that are springing up across the nation, the largest and best-known being Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement. Nourished by the Negro’s frustration over the continued existence of racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America, who have absolutely repudiated Christianity, and who have concluded that the white man is an incorrigible ‘devil’”.

despite mass uprisings by blacks in resistance to unrelenting violence and the law’s delay, despite tacit urgings by blacks to be afforded some means to survive, despite bold attempts to live separate lives in America […] blacks, in the main, found themselves denied of every possible avenue to either establish their own socioeconomic independence or participate fully in larger society (“Panther”).

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

In the 21st Century, during a period of racial discrimination, a political African American activist, Ta-Nehisi Coates, presents Letter to My Son to insist that the government system needs to be changed so that African Americans could be granted a chance in their community to not be abused and violated by the government. In an attempt to support his claim about injustice of African Americans, Coates reminds his readers that the government system and federal laws contributed to the abuse of a black person’s body and mind in their community. Thusly, Coate’s underlined purpose of comparing the body and mind of a white and black man’s power during the slavery period was to emphasize the change in the government system to give African Americans their rights to be able to live in a society without injustice or abuse. He later adopts a critical and sympathetic tone to simultaneously scare the government to change their laws for all people of African descent in their society.

Freedom is a fundamental human right that all Americans enjoy today. Foner defines freedom as the ability of an individual to do as he/she wishes as long as long as the actions are within the law and respect the right of others (2). Accordingly, freedom is among the rights that are anchored in American constitution to protect the civil liberties of all Americans. Today, America is regarded as a democratic country that operates within the rule of law partly because of its respect for human rights (Romano 3). However, history shows that the freedom that African Americans enjoy today did not come easily; rather came after a long and enduring struggle by Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968). It is noted that, unlike white Americans who enjoyed freedom to do as they wished in the early 19th century, African Americans were denied the freedom to operate freely like their white counterparts (Foner 6). Therefore, because curtailing the freedom of African Americans were denying them the opportunity to advance socially, economically and politically, the Civil Rights Movement was formed by Martin Luther King Junior and colleagues to fight against racial segregation and to ensure that African Africans gain equal rights as the whites. This essay seeks to explore the Civil Rights Movement (1954-1968) struggle for freedom and

The white workers beat an old black lady for not paying her bill. He could not defend the old lady because he knew the whites would hurt him if I tried to help her. Later on in the story, a security guard slaps a fellow black female employee on the butt. The African American man feels embarrassed for letting his friend get slapped on the butt. The employee who got slapped says, “‘Don’t worry, you couldn’t help it”’ (246). This quote shows that blacks had no chance to defend others because if they did, the whites would just beat them even more. The girl knows they can’t do anything about it and tells him not to worry. From white security guards to racist groups such as the KKK, whites could do basically whatever they want to do to blacks at this time. At the very beginning of Malcolm X, the KKK is at Malcolm’s house. They were surrounding the house, “brandishing their shotguns and rifles” (1). The KKK is around the house with weapons wanting Malcolm’s father to leave town. He had no way to defend himself because they had all weapons. Many people and organizations in town, and even the police are corrupt and don’t like the blacks. Part of being a man is defending others and the whites would not let them do this at this time.

When I survey the landscape in black America, it does not take long for me to recognize the massive impression of a vehement struggle of a collective group of people to simply keep their head above water. The problem in the black community is that it is where every ill of this nation is felt first. It is the place in which much of the economic devastation is felt and absorbed in order to relieve some of the pressure off of this nation’s more affluent citizens.

Black people in the U.S have been fighting for themselves since the birth of America. Many today say that it will never stop. They may say that the challenges they face will never disappear. During the 1800s Blacks went through extreme hardships. Most of which were regarding slavery and the many attempts to put an end to it. The title of Howard Zinn’s Chapter Nine in A people’s History of the U.S represents much more than a typical reader would presume. The title has a meaning that represents a bulk of black history in the United States of America. The chapter title “Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom” represents the everlasting fight that black people in the United States of America have had to put up for their own rights and freedom because blacks fought during the time of slavery and didn’t give up, the time period spent fighting to end slavery, and even after Slaves were freed they have had to continue fighting for the reason that they weren’t given true freedom.

African-Americans have fought on many of liberty’s battlefields from the pre-emancipated plantation to the killing fields of the Civil War. African-Americans have always been willing to fight not just for their freedom, but for their country as well. Yet, their country never lived up to its founding document that asserts that, “All men are created equal; ”instead,

In the United States, there has been many cases of Racial injustice. From the beginning of the start of the United States of America it was the injustice to the Native Americans being captured and used for slave labor while their bison be slaughtered for sportsmanship. But this paper is on the specific race of the African Americans. There are many races that have been racially profiled and ostracized by the English people. But the treatment that African Americans have endured even till this day is disheartening. African Americans have gone through enslavement during the early 1600’s to the mid 1800’s. Then the African Americans were obstructed by the Jim Crow laws creating the ‘Separate but Equal” propaganda during the late 1800’s into the 1960’s. After the abolishment of the Jim Crow Laws, people were considered equal until the recent actions of many police officers using deadly force on African American youths in the early 2000’s.

“What I told you is what your grandparents tried to tell me: that this is your country, that this is your world, that this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.” (Coates). This powerful quote exemplifies the mistreatment of blacks in America as something that has been prevalent throughout our nation’s history and is still present in our contemporary world. Our national founding document promised that “All men are created equal”. As a nation we have never achieved the goal of equality largely because of the institution of slavery and its continuing repercussions on American society.

Though many white men fight with violence, all black men must fight back with acceptance and love, which poses significant physical threat to the black man. The nonviolent black man is brave enough to act on what he knows: a black man is no better or worse than a white man. By acting rationally and without violence, a person can authentically maintain his or her dignity by being respectful, courageous, and accepting. These qualities are especially admirable when they exist in all areas of a person’s life, even in the face of physical danger, violence, and fear. When a person chooses to act on what he or she knows is right, this person understands that “to act is to be committed,” but “to be committed is to be in danger” (9). A white American man takes no risk in claiming that an African American is inferior, especially since his fundamental reason for believing so, that the black

It is totally unbelievable that America being a country full of diversity has this dark side that a majority is ashamed to talk about. In the article “The Case for Reparations,” Ta-Nehisi Coates debates how the endless timeline of wrongdoings, both socially and economically, towards the black community have ultimately affected their position in society today.

Marable (2002) describes the correlation of the fact that “The profits from the sale of human beings helped to establish the foundations of American capitalism” (p. 30) with the Dred Scott decision that “[black people] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect” (p. 35). This connection explains how the representation of African Americans as inferior was not destroyed once slavery ended, it merely shifted with progress in order to maintain the socioeconomic status of white people so they could continue to profit from it. Once slavery ended, black people lost their value as laborers and racial discrimination changed to prevent them from interacting with white people as much as possible. However, DuBois’s numerous pictures of churches and school buildings show that the African American community was capable of establishing and understanding the “white” institutions of education, construction, and

In a time in the world where we are seeing increased violence and backlash against government and police control, it is necessary to look at the past and see what led our country to the state it exists in. Many issues such as police brutality, court decisions and riots are due to institutionalized inequalities. Desegregation during the Civil Rights Movement had a false appearance of equality that brought about a complex form of discrimination and resistance in response. Black lives were still being neglected and peaceful protests quickly morphed into militancy based in black nationalism. Malcolm X, a black revolutionary, once said that “Algeria was a police state. Any occupied territory is a police state. Harlem is a police state. The police in Harlem are like an occupying force. The same conditions that forced the noble people of Algeria to resort to terrorist-type tactics…those same conditions prevail in every Negro community in the United States.”Malcolm’s idea that a police state leads to terrorist tactics in negro communities is based in historical evidence of colonialism and segregation and can be reinforced by the arguments of Cabral,Covington, Daulatzai, The Battle of Algiers and the Spook who Sat by the Door. In this paper, I will argue that as Malcolm X stated, negro communities in the United States are subject to internal colonialism, segregation and isolation thus leading to the colonized people of these communities revolting against the police state which