STOKELY CARMICHAEL, “What We Want,” New York Review of Books, Sept. 22, 1966:

            “One of the tragedies of the struggle against racism is that up until now there has been no national organization which could speak to the growing militancy of young black people in the urban ghetto.  There has been only a civil rights movement, whose tone of voice was adapted to an audience of liberal whites.  It served as a sort of buffer zone between them and angry young blacks.  None of its so-called leaders could go into a rioting community and be listened to. . . .

            For too many years, black Americans marched and had their heads broken and got shot.  They were saying to the country, ‘Look, you guys are supposed to be nice guys and we are only going to do what we are supposed to do - why do you beat us up, why don’t you give us what we ask, why don’t you straighten yourselves out?’  After years of this, we are at almost the same point - because we demonstrated from a position of weakness.  We cannot be expected any longer to march and have our heads broken in order to say to whites: ‘come on, you’re nice guys.’  For you are not nice guys.  We have found you out. . . .

            Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.  We should begin with the basic fact that black Americans have two problems: they are poor and they are black.  All other problems arise from this two-sided reality: lack of education, the so-called apathy of black men.  Any program to end racism must address itself to that double reality. . . .

            For racism to die, a totally different America must be born.  This is what the white society does not wish to face; this is why that society prefers to talk about integration.  But integration speaks not at all to the problem of poverty, only to the problem of blackness.  Integration today means the man who ‘makes it,’ leaving his black brothers behind in the ghetto as fast as his new sports car will take him.  It has no relevance to the Harlem wino or to the cottonpicker making three dollars a day. . . .

            Integration, moreover, speaks to the problem of blackness in a despicable way.  As a goal, it has been based on complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school.  This reinforces, among both black and white, the idea that ‘white’ is automatically better and ‘black’ is by definition inferior.  This is why integration is a subterfuge for the maintenance of white supremacy.  It allows the nation to focus on a handful of Southern children who get into the white schools, at great price, and to ignore the 94 percent who are left behind in unimproved all-black schools.  Such situations will not change until black people have power - to control their own school boards, in this case.”

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