This week I ask you to journey back to November
1972, read, analyze, and compare the message contained in the
October / November 1972 Newsletter of the San Francisco Black
Caucus with where Black America is today in 2007.
The following is from that 1972, San Francisco Black Caucus
piece entitled, Mental Consciousness:
"The sweeping Presidential victory
of Richard Millhouse Nixon was certainly nothing of a surprise
to aware Black people
in this country. It points to the obvious right wing, reactionary
anti-Black sentiments of the majority of white Americans. It
also signals the beginning of the most bitter internal conflicts
that this country has yet to face. It proves that the goals
and ideals that this country was supposedly founded upon were
then and are now nothing but a sham. In addition, Mr. Nixon's
overwhelming reelection points to the fears and paranoia of
white America tak[ing] definite priority over the welfare and
education of impoverished Black children, jobless Black parents
and over the correcting of one of the most unjust, lopsided
[legal] systems to be found anywhere in the so-called democracy
of the Western bloc nations (despite all [of its] eloquent
verbalizations of concern for nonwhite people).
White America has done it again! She has once again slapped
the face and ignored the cry of the ones whose ancestors she
enslaved at her birth. In conclusion we say to those of the
Black community who saw fit to defect to the Nixon administration--an
administration which has shown through word and deed its utter
contempt for the agonies and pains of Black people--; thank
you for identifying yourselves as being opportunists and traitors
to the very goals, hopes, and aspirations for which so many
Black folks--young and old alike--have paid such a dear price
marked in blood throughout this land. You are still biologically Black
and for all your pimping of your own people you cannot change
that. Nor will your masters in the Nixon administration forget
what you have done, for they too realize that since you could
not find it in yourselves to be concerned and loyal to your
own flesh and blood, how could you ever be fully trusted to
serve in their racists interests? Your defection from the Black
community for your own self interests will not be forgotten!
Nor will history speak lightly of what you have done. Now that
you have been willingly waved as political flags by your new
found masters, what will you do? Where will you turn when they
tire of your insipid stupidity and you have lost your usefulness
as a 'good Black house nigger?'
To those of us who are Black in mind and
body, we say be strong, for we will not give in to the
dispassionate, contemptible,
actions of the Nixon administration and its lackeys. We are
assured that we all will only fight harder and the San Francisco
Black Caucus knows you will too! Lasima Tushinde Mbilashaka
(We Shall Succeed Without A Doubt!)"
Those words were published and spoken almost thirty-five years
ago now. Do you see any parallels to the present? Think about
it.
We Black people, at great cost, survived Richard Millhouse Nixon
to the present. We must once more get through the insanity, hypocrisy,
and cruelty of white America and its stooges, this time in the
21st Century.
The struggle continues and we must intensify it in order to
keep it real for ourselves and those to come.
BC Columnist
Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the
former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa,
a former political prisoner and the only American to have
successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case
to the United Nations under the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. Click
here to contact Mr. Pinkney. |
