The new symbol of the day, an upraised black fist. Déjà vu: The militant Black Power salute of the sixties resurrected. It is disconcerting to see TV stations flaunting the fist as appropriated by Black Lives Matter to symbolize the racial issues of the day, but then, none of the anchors would be aware of its radical connotations, they hadn’t been born yet.
The Civil Rights movement in the sixties gave rise to freedom marches, sit-ins, protests. Dr. Martin Luther King was an eloquent leader of the sweeping protests, a visible personage meeting in the political arena to demand basic rights and racial integration for African Americans. King did not see violence and separatism as a viable path for the Civil Rights movement.
But within any group, there are those which splinter off on their own agendas and Black Power was one of these. Stokely Carmichael was active in the mainstream Civil Rights movement at rallies, on freedom rides, championing voting rights in the early sixties. But disillusioned, he moved to form black political organizations. Taking his lead from Malcolm X, who pushed for black supremacy and criticized the mainstream civil rights movement for nonviolence, Carmichael emphasized Black Power.
“We been saying Freedom for six years. What we are going to start saying now is Black Power.”
Perhaps this was intended overall as a psychological and cultural theme, but on the other hand, Carmichael said, “When you talk of Black Power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created.”
Compare Carmichael’s goal with the goals of “Black Lives Matter” reported in this post. The truly do wish to destroy. It is the Marxist Revolution.
Fast forward to July 7. Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) addressed a press conference on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol building about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020 which the Democrats are gushing over.
“We can’t stop at criminal justice reform. We are not merely fighting to tear down the systems of oppression in the criminal justice system. We are fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in education, in health care, in employment [and] in the air we breathe.
“We must recognize that these systems of oppression are linked. As long as our economy and political systems prioritize profit without considering who is profiting, who is being shut out, we will perpetuate this inequality. So, we cannot stop [with reform of the] criminal justice system. We must begin the work of dismantling the whole system of oppression wherever we find it.”
The Nation, July 8, 2020 Republicans Lose Their Collective Mind Over Ilhan Omar’s Call to Dismantle ‘Systems of Oppression’
And here we are today, touting a symbol of what might be called black racism, without a clue as to what it meant then and what it means now.
Déjà vu.
This article, About That Upraised Fist is a post from The Bellarmine Forum.
https://bellarmineforum.org/about-that-upraised-fist/
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