Black Power

by Richard Wright

  “I take it that you wouldn’t use such methods?”

  “I’m a Westerner,” he said, sucking in his breath. “I was educated in the West.”

  I had the feeling that he was speaking sincerely, that he could not conceivably touch such methods, that he regarded them with loathing, and that he did not even relish thinking that anybody else would. My personal impression was that Dr. Busia was not and could never be a politician, that he lacked that innate brutality of force and drive that makes a mass leader. He was too analytical, too reflective to even want to get down into the muck of life and organize men. I sensed, too, that maybe certain moral scruples would inhibit him in acting….

  “What has been the influence of Christianity?”

  “Despite all the efforts of the missionaries, the Akan people have not changed their center of cultural gravity. Where you do find changes, they are mainly due to the church and the factor of urbanization. But even there you find a curious overlapping, a mixture. You have literate chiefs, for example, who practice an unwritten religion; you have lawyers trained in England who feel a tie to the tribal legal conceptions of their people. Such mixtures go right through the whole of our society. It’s not simple.”

  “Have any psychological examinations been done to determine how this mixture is reflected in the minds of the people?”

  “Nothing has been done in that direction,” he said.

  I next inquired of Dr. Busia the reasons for the low population level of the Gold Coast. I pointed out to him that the geographical area of the Gold Coast was more or less the same as that of England, but the Gold Coast had less than one-tenth of England’s population….

  “Two things have kept the population level low,” he said. “The lack of water and the tsetse fly. Seventy-five per cent of our population live in the forest area. If we could banish the tsetse fly from that area, we’d have horses to draw our carts and cows for meat and dairy products. Now, in the Northern Territories there is no water; it’s filled with scrubland that can barely support its meager population.”

  “Dr. Busia, if you don’t want to commit yourself on the question I’m going to ask, you can just tell me,” I told him. “How do you, a British-trained social scientist, feel about the British recognizing the Convention People’s Party…?”

  “Sure; I’ll tell you,” he said readily. “I’ll tell you exactly what I told Sir Arden-Clarke, the Governor of this Colony…. The British here care nothing for our people; they are concerned with their political power which enables them to defend their financial interests. They sided with the Convention People’s Party in order to protect those interests. It’s that simple. We educated Africans looked to the British for but one thing: the maintenance of standards. Now that they have let that drop, what are they good for?”

  Again I heard that echo of pathos…. A scientist had been trained by Britain to expect certain kinds of behavior from Britishers; now British behavior had turned out to be something that even their best pupils found somewhat nauseating….

  “The British call such abrupt changes ‘flexibility,’ do they not, Dr. Busia?”

  Dr. Busia laughed ruefully.

  “But tell me…In your book, Social Survey Sekondi-Takoradi, you show pretty clearly the disintegrating forces of urbanization at work in the cities of the Gold Coast. Now, is there any widespread awareness of this?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Is there any plan to see that the growth of your cities can take a new direction?”

  “There is no plan,” he said.

  “I feel, from reading your book, that when tribal life and rituals break down under the impact of urbanization, and when no new sense of direction takes the place of what tribal culture gave, you will find a new kind of pagan among you: a pagan who feels no need to worship….”

  “The germs of that are making their appearance in our country,” he admitted. “It’s not widespread as yet; but it’s evident.”

  “Do you think that Nkrumah can easily wipe out the old habits of the people—?”

  “The African will react in that matter just as all people react,” he said. “In the crucial moments of life, people fall back upon the deepest teachings of their lives; hence, in matters like politics, death, childbirth, etc., it’s the teachings and beliefs of the tribe that all people—even those who are literate—turn to, give support to and trust….”

  There were other questions that I wanted to ask Dr. Busia, but I felt that they were too delicate. Had I not been afraid of wounding his feelings, I’d have asked him how was it that he, a social scientist, who saw so clearly the forces that were breaking down tribal life, could oppose those forces? If those forces had given way under the impact of industrialization in other countries, would they not do so in the Gold Coast? And, knowing that, why did he take his stand with the opposition? But I’d been told that Dr. Busia came of royal stock, that his brother was a chief, that he too might possibly some day be a chief….

  I’d now talked to enough educated Africans of the Gold Coast for there to emerge in my mind a dim portrait of an African character that the world knew little or nothing about…. I could imagine a young boy being born in a tribe, taking his mother’s name, belonging to the blood-clan of his mother, but coming under the daily authority of his father, starting life by following his father’s trade. I could well imagine this boy’s father’s coming in contact with missionaries who would tell him that his religion was crude, primitive, that he ought to bring his family into the church of the One and Living God….

  I could imagine that family’s trying to change its ways; I could sense conflicts between husband and wife, between the father’s family and the mother’s family over the issue of Christianity; and I could readily picture the father, in the end, winning his argument on the basis of his superior earning power gained from working for Christian Europeans.

  Let us assume, then, that the boy is the first child that the family has consented to send to the mission school…. There, he learns how “bad” is the life of his tribe; he’s taught to know what power the outside world has, how weak and fragile is his country in comparison to the might of England, America, or France. Slowly he begins to feel that the communal life under the various stools is a childlike and primitive thing, and that the past of his tribe reeks of human sacrifice.

  He now begins to identify himself with his mentors; they teach him to eat a balanced diet; he becomes ashamed to go about half nude; he feels that painting the body with lurid colors signifies nothing; he grows to loathe the mumbo-jumbo of the chiefs and the incessant beating of those infernal drums of state; and, above all, he squirms in the grip of the sticky compound life where every man is his brother and every woman is his sister or mother and can lay claims upon him which, if he refuses to honor them, can make him an outlaw….

  He develops a sense of his own individuality as being different and unique and he comes to believe that he has a destiny, a personality that must not be violated by others. He cringes in his heart at the memory that he once had to obey orders but confusedly heard and dimly understood from the shades where his ancestors dwelt.

  Christ is offered and he accepts the way of the Cross. He now has a stake in the divine; he has a soul to save, and there seeps into his young and yearning heart that awful question: Where will I spend Eternity? The future looms before him in terms of a romantic agony: he can either live forever or be consigned to a lake of fire that never ceases to burn those whose sins have found them out….

  Yes, he must redeem himself; he must change; he must have a career. He reads of the exploits of the English and the Americans and the French, and he is told that they are strong and powerful because they believe in God. Therefore, finishing his mission studies, he elects to go to England or France or America to study…. He is baptized and his name is changed from Kojo or Kwame or Kobina or Kofior Akufo or Ako or Kwesi, to Luke or Peter or Matthew or Paul or Mark or John…. He adopts a Western style of dress, even if it does
not fit his needs or the climate. He no longer eats with his brothers, squatting on the floor about a common dish and lifting the food with his fingers; he insists upon sitting at a table and using a knife and fork.

  If he goes to America to continue his studies, he is elated upon arrival. What a country! What a people! The seeming openness, the lavish kindness, the freedom of the individual, and the sense that one can change one’s lot in life, the lightheartedness, the almost seeming indifference with which religion is taken, the urban manner of Negro living and what the Negroes have achieved against great odds—all of this contrasts with the bleak mud huts and the harsh life of the African compounds. For the first time in his life he sees black men building and operating their own institutions in a Western manner, and a sense of social romance is disclosed to him, and he yearns to emulate it…. All of this makes him apply himself to the study of his chosen subjects with a zeal that is second only to the religion that he’d been taught back in his African mission school. But…

  He begins, as the years pass, to detect that the Americans are not a happy or contented people. He learns how to be afraid, how to decipher the looks of desperation on the American faces about him. He learns how it feels to be related to nobody. What at first had seemed a great romance now seems like a panting after money with a hotness of emotion that leaves no time to relax. And he begins to wonder what would happen to him in such a life….

  And he learns the meaning of the word “race.” What he had failed to notice before now strikes home: he is free, but there are certain things he cannot do, certain places where he cannot go, all because he’s black. A chronic apprehension sets up in him; the “person” in him that the missionaries had told him to develop is reduced, constricted. He’d never thought of being rich, and now he knows that if he is not rich in this land, he’s lost, a shameful thing….

  That sense of poetry in him that even religion had not dulled makes him ask himself if he wants to be defined in terms of production and consumption. The feeling of security he had first felt is gone; the more he comes to know America, the more he, stammeringly at first and more forth-rightly later on, begins to ask himself: “Where’s it all going? What’s it all for?”

  And the only answers that make sense to him are heard in Union Square or Washington Park. Yes; he’d go back home and try to change things, to fight for freedom….

  And if he went to England for his education, his sense of alienation would be the same, but differently arrived at. Indeed, his blackness is swallowed up in the vast grayness of London. Perhaps he might have difficulty getting a room in which to live because of his blackness, but he soon meets another Englishman who feels free to do what he likes with his own home. But what puzzles him is the English assumption that everything that is done in England is right, that the English way is the only way to do it. He sees that no black man could ever sit in the House of Commons, that he is not expected to participate in English life on any level except that of a doctor. It seems that the English entertain a quaint notion that all Africans have sensitive hands that can heal the sick!

  At Oxford or Cambridge he is far from the world of “race.” He is a black gentleman in a graded hierarchy of codes of conduct in which, if he learns them, he can rise. He can, even though black, become a Sir…. The more he learns, the more Africa fades from his mind and the more shameful and bizarre it seems. But, finally, he begins to gag. The concepts that are being fed to him insult him. Though he will have a place of honor, that place will be with the lower and subject races…. Every book he reads reveals how England won her empire and this begins to clash in his mind with the codes of honor that he’s learning so skillfully to practice. Soon he knows that he has to avoid saying certain things; for example, if it’s known that he’s a nationalist, he will surely not pass his bar examinations. Inhibition sets in and he has to choose whether he’s to be among the favored or the scorned.

  He learns that his blackness can be redeemed by service, but this service is not in the interests of his people; it’s against them…. He begins to wonder why his missionary teachers never hinted at all about this. Were they parties to this deception? At the bottom of English society he sees servility and suffering and he senses that what has ensnared the people of his country has also ensnared these poor whites, and the first blow to his confidence is received. He could have been like those drab and colorless millions of London’s slums; indeed, his mother and father are like that in far-off Africa…. He becomes afraid of his choice, and slowly he begins to sympathize with the fear and insecurity of the poor whites around him and, in the end, he begins to identify himself with them. It’s not in the schoolrooms or the churches that he can hear moral preachments denouncing what is being done to his country; he hears it only in Hyde Park. But he’s too afraid as yet to agree with what he hears; it sounds too violent, too drastic; it offends those delicate feelings that the missionaries instilled in him.

  His first clumsy criticisms are addressed to religious people and he’s disturbed that they defend the system as it is. He’s secretly enraged that the English do not feel that he is being dishonored. Just as the missionaries taught him just so much and no more, he finds that the English accept him just so much and no more. He’s praised when he’s like the English, but he sees that the English are careful to make sure that he’s kept at arm’s length and he begins to feel that he’s a fish out of water—he’s not English and he’s not African….

  If he chooses to go to France, he will encounter the same theme, but with even subtler variations. Indeed, in France he’ll need all of his will power to keep from being completely seduced by the blandishments of French culture. None of the blatant American racism or that vague social aloofness which so often prevails in England will meet him in Paris. Instead, he’d be eagerly received everywhere, but…

  He senses that the Frenchmen he meets are sounding him out about the national liberation movement in his country. If he makes the mistake of being forthright about his country’s demand for freedom, he’ll encounter no overt racial discrimination; he’ll simply find everything suddenly becoming extremely difficult. He’ll learn, as he talks to animated and polite Frenchmen, that they feel that they have worked out, in the last two thousand years, just about the most civilized attitude on earth; he’ll be obliquely but constantly discouraged to think in any terms save those of extreme individualism.

  Suppose he discovers that the French know nothing of his country and its culture, and, to remedy this lack, suppose he tells his French friends that he plans to launch a magazine in which young Africans can express themselves to the people of the Western world…? A good idea! But, mon ami, you don’t need to create a new magazine! You have the freedom to contribute to any magazine published in Paris! In fact, mon vieux, we’d welcome any contribution you might make. By the way, we’d like to make you a co-editor of our review!

  The more intelligent the French think he is, the more he’ll be watched; but this surveillance is not done in terms of crude spying, not yet—but in terms of social cultivation. He’ll hear his professors in the classrooms constantly asking him: “What do you intend to do when you get your degree?” And if he says he’s seriously thinking of settling down in France and pursuing his profession, marrying, no matter what woman of what race, his professors nod and smile their encouragement. But if he says that he wishes to return to his homeland and fight to lift up the standards of living, to free his country from foreign rule, from French domination, he feels a coolness of attitude that, in time, will change to freezing….

  He sees that many of his fellow blacks are obtaining university degrees and that almost all of them are at once put into civil service where they can be effectively controlled!

  The black colonial Frenchman in Paris, like his counterpart in London or New York, will encounter the men on soapboxes preaching revolution, but, to his surprise, he’ll find that the French are fairly indulgent toward his budding interest in Marxism! It’s only upon nationalism t
hat they frown…. Hell find, in Paris as in the colonies proper, that the French will prefer his becoming a Communist rather than his embracing the cause of his homeland. In time he sees that the French have a great deal of experience in dealing with Communists, but that they shy off in a state of terror when confronted with nationalists.

  He learns that in French eyes nationalism implies a rejection of French culture, whereas they regard Communism as a temporary aberration of youth. Let him yell for revolution all he can; he might find a few French millionaires at his side, helping to spur him on…!

  Alone in Paris, he’ll take up with some French girl and she’ll sympathize with him, but will tactfully point out how hard and long will be his fight, that there are so many pleasures to be savored, and he’ll be lucky if he does not yield. He sees that many of his black brothers who came to France are sophisticated, successful black Frenchmen!

  Still thirsting for self-redemption, thwarted in pride, he dreams of showing the French that he too can build a nation. He realizes now that his resolution to do this must be ten times as strong as that of an African in New York or London; also he begins to realize that the culture of France is so profound that it can absorb even Communism and pat its stomach….

  It’s a desperate young black French colonial who resolves to return to his homeland and face the wrath of white Frenchmen who’ll kill him for his longing for the freedom of his own nation, but who’ll give him the Legion d’honneur for being French…. Through books he finds that other men have forged weapons to defend themselves from the domination of the West; he learns that the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Burmese saved themselves and he begins to master the theories of how they did it.