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Author looks at plight of Black-Americans

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Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (1967)
By Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton
Random house publication, New York
ISBN 0-679-74313-8

WHEN outgoing US President Barack Obama visited his ancestral home, Kenya, he stressed on the need for Kenyans to recognise gay and lesbians’ rights.
Obama spoke unapologetically about the need to embrace this practice, vile as it is to African culture.
His speech clearly showed that despite being black, as the President of the US, he was not his own man.
He was speaking and expressing the sentiments of those who put him in power.
He was not delivering on his convictions, but that which the masters wanted to hear.
In other words, one could say Obama spoke the mind of his handlers.
This leads to the issues raised in the book under review this week.
Co-authored by Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation is a book that pin-points the blackman’s predicament in America.
The problems of blacks living in the ghetto or cities in America is likened to the situation of blacks in Africa.
Focusing on the African-American living in the heart of racist America, the book offers solutions that can lead to the liberation of blacks.
Through brutal practices such as slavery and colonialism, the whiteman created for his kith and kin a path to ‘supremacy’.
In the process of acquiring and plundering the resources of blacks, they created systems that made black people hate themselves.
Through systems such as assimilation, they made blacks strive to be whites.
“The missionaries came for our goods, not for our good,” writes Ture and Hamilton.
“Indeed, the missionaries turned the Africans’ eyes toward heaven and then robbed them blind in the process.”
The authors zero in on the problem of identity for ‘negroes’ living in America and the need for black consciousness worldwide.
“There is a growing resentment of the word ‘negro’, for example, because this term is the invention of our oppressor, it is his image of us that he describes,” write the authors.
The authors also point out that blacks should desist from being defined by the whiteman, rather they should be beings of their own making.
Blacks are encouraged to liberate themselves by having their own institutions, companies and political parties.
“The black people should create rather than imitate – create new forms which are politically inclusive rather than imitate old racist forms which are politically exclusive,” they write.
According to the authors, the black man in Africa is similar to any other, just a different continent but sharing the same history.
The black man in America still nurses the wounds of slavery, while his brother in Africa still wipes tears wrought by colonialism.
Black Power: The Politics of Liberation is book that encourages reform among black people.
Written with the aid of citation from famous revolutionaries such as Fredrick Douglas and W. E. B. Dubois, among others, the book tells blacks that they must not continue to be victims of the whiteman’s system.
The writers remind blacks of the need to be always alert as calls by the likes of the late British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerstone, that: “There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests,” continue to reflect the whiteman’s relationship with the blackman.
Even with a black president in ‘power’, blacks in the US are still filthy in the eyes of the racists controlling the US.
“Many of the social welfare agencies – public and private – frequently pretend to offer ‘uplift’ services; in reality, they end up creating a system which dehumanises the individual and perpetuates his dependency,” write Ture and Hamilton.
According to the authors, black power is being in control of the situation.
Up until now, ages after slavery was abolished, blacks still carry the burden of working for white-owned companies.
They suffer from racial segregation and this is clearly visible even in the streets of New York, where the Headquarters of United Nations, an organisation which ‘promotes’ peace, are situated.
Blacks are not safe in the cities of the US.
Newspapers in the US make headlines everyday with news about not only the brutality of white American police, but the killing of unarmed blacks in broad daylight.
The plight of blacks in one of the major political parties in America, the Democratic Party, is highlighted.
Though it has more blacks integrated in it, it is a white-controlled party.
“Those who have the right to define are the masters of the situation,” says Ture and Hamilton.
“Black people must re-define themselves, and only they can do that.”
Black power, according to the authors, is having institutions owned by blacks which recognise the existence of fellow blacks.

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