I wasn’t even going to write this but in light of the recent events surrounding Florida I feel that it is necessary for us to critically look at some of the intricacies of the black civil rights movement in America.  Something has been lost in this fight, we continue to do the same activities but to little or no effect, progress has stalled, and people seem to have forgotten how to really affect change.  The leaders in our community seem to be slightly flabbergasted and at a loss for words, and the community itself seems to be in the dark about how to proceed to effect the change they desire.  We are all caught up in a whirlwind of emotion and with no one to direct that emotion nationally, some of us have begun to lash out in the only way we know how; which unfortunately seems to be the way we handle things in the streets.  So to all this I offer just a few critical points of thought as to why I believe the old methods appear to not be working, and what I believe we can do as a people to keep moving forward.

To point number 1: On August 28 1963, a Wednesday, we had the largest civil rights demonstration in history with almost 250,000 people in attendance on the march on Washington.  In 1960 the lunch counter sit-ins began in North Carolina.  In 1955 the Bus boycott begins in Montgomery.  What do all these events have in common besides sharing Dr. King’s participation at some level or another, they are all extremely violent events in which a group of people were both violent and non-violent at the same time.  Well what do I mean by that? 

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached non-violence how dare you accuse him of being violent.”  That’s what you just said right.

Well therein lies the problem with the current black movements, they aren’t violent enough.  You see there are many different types of violence, and Dr. King was firm in his approach that physical violence would not be used.  Notice how often he said physical violence. Dr. King was a master at what I like to call social and economic warfare, a trick he learned from Gandhi’s work in India.  Physically I will not touch you, but by not riding these buses we are beating up your wallet, we are destroying your money supply, and in that I am winning the war regardless of what you do to my body, economically I am kicking your behind.

We saw this in the March on Washington as 250,000 people opted out of work to march through Washington on a Wednesday.  But we saw something else as well, we saw political violence through the pressure caused by having 250,000 people standing outside waiting for a bill to be signed into law that would give them the legal freedom they so desperately wanted. We saw image violence as you had about 200 thousand blacks in a crowd together acting like they had some sense, going completely against the theme regularly associated with blacks, that theme being that blacks are animals that aren’t capable of following the law or being civil. 

We saw this in the lunch counter sit-ins when people were being beaten and abused publically and refusing to lash out making the government seem like brutal bullies; and do you think people frequented those establishments while those sit-ins where going on, probably not.  This was both social violent as socially it wasn’t acceptable for them to be in those establishments, and economically violent as those establishments lost money while they were in there.  You see those protest were very violent – swift and intense force, resistance; but not physical.  Riots don’t work because they are physically violent but not violent in any other way, and normally the destruction is in a neighborhood that is already in poverty (the rioters have to fix the fences before they can knock them over), but they don’t affect any real force that causes change which can only come from social or economic violence.  With that being said, Dr. King was just as violent and Malcolm X, neither of which led a riot.

To Point Number 2:  Nobody really knows what we want.  Back in those days it was clear, we want civil rights, and today it’s not so clear anymore.  Some of us want reparations, some of us want our own nation, some of us want the others to shut up and be happy, and some of us just want to be left alone.  Now this point isn’t going to be as long as the other point because it’s simple; back in the 60’s and the times around that period and before we always had one common theme that we spoke in one loud voice.  Today that voice is fragmented and it is saying a bunch of different things at once.  If you ask people what is the most pressing issue in the community, they all have a different answer for you.  As long as that is the case, we will always have a difficult time accomplishing anything.  We don’t have to be in complete unity, but we need to be united in public, especially regarding what we want.

To Point Number 3:  On a national level we have no plans for our community (that can be readily found).  Now this might be because on a national level we really don’t have a community (it’s more like a collection of neighborhoods), but there is no long term plan in action for the achievement of our goals (that the average person knows about).  We have what amounts to several thousand groups working in their own areas towards their own means with no thought of a bigger picture for the people as a whole.  It’s like running a business without a business plan, who cares if the marketing department has a plan and the operations area has a plan if the company as a whole doesn’t have one.  Black leaders need to be talking to each other and organizing with each other constantly, the march on Washington had several different smaller and larger groups coming together to make that happen.  What has been done since then that the average Black American is aware of to affect change and uplift? 

Of course as individuals there are several things that can be done, and even as groups there are more things to be done than the few I have listed here.  One of the biggest things we can do as individuals to affect our group standing is to start treating each other the way we want to be treated.  We can’t continue to act one way and demand to be treated another.

What are some of the reasons you think our progress has slowed?  Why is the community so content to be physically violent?  What would your plan be if you were in a position to implement it and why haven’t you done so already?