Black Power

by Richard Wright

  (It was the first time that I’d heard the phrase “Dutch crazy,” and, when I investigated its origin, I found that it was the Dutch description of all those Indonesian nationalists who had refused to compromise with the Dutch and had insisted upon national freedom. For three hundred and fifty years the Dutch had so rigged the governing of the colony that there was but a handful of people out of a population of eighty million who could read and write; and, naturally, when that handful demanded taking over the country, they were regarded as “crazy”…)

  My interest in the Asian-African Conference was not shared by personal friends of mine.

  “What on earth have African Negroes and Burmese Buddhists in common?” a young, ardent Frenchwoman asked me, with her eyes wide with images of global racial revenge.

  A day or so later I met a young Dutch girl whom I’d known for some time; she was liberal, anti-racist. Ah, I must tell her that I’m going to Indonesia.

  “Oh, D.!” I called to her; she was walking ahead of me.

  She stopped, turned, smiled, and held out her hand.

  “How are you?” she asked me.

  “I’m happy,” I said.

  “Good! What’s happened?”

  “I’m going to one of your ex-colonies, Indonesia. They are holding a conference there, a meeting of Asian and African nations—”

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed.

  Her brown eyes were wide in surprise, her lips parted. She reached forward and impulsively seized the fingers of my hands.

  “You’re actually going to Indonesia?” she asked me breathlessly.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, God! Then maybe you can bring me some spices?”

  I hid my shock, remembering that spices were what Christopher Columbus had been looking for in 1492 when he had sailed forth…Even before leaving Paris, I was discovering how the reality of Eastern nations was reflected in many European minds: the islands of the Atlantic and Pacific, and the millions of people who lived on them, still meant spices….

  I was ready to fly to Bandung, to fly from the old world of Spain to the new world of Asia…. My work in Spain was over and I was sitting in a café with a Spanish friend; he was liberal, anti-Franco, a bitter man who longed passionately for freedom.

  “When are you leaving us? “my Spanish friend asked.

  “Tomorrow,” I said.

  “You are returning to Paris?”

  “No. I’m going to the Orient.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “Indonesia.”

  “Why are you going there?”

  “On the eighteenth of April there is a great conference taking place.”

  “What conference?”

  I stared at my Spanish friend in disbelief.

  “There are twenty-nine Asian and African nations, all free and independent, meeting in Bandung, Indonesia.”

  “Why are these nations meeting?”

  “They are going to explore problems of colonialism and racialism.”

  “Good God!” he exclaimed. “I hadn’t heard of that!”

  “It’s in the newspapers,” I said.

  “Not in the Spanish newspapers,” he said, bringing down the corners of his mouth and shaking his head. He cupped his palms to his eyes and moaned: “Once we Spanish were great; now we are nothing…. If Franco decides not to let us know what is happening in the outside world, how can we know?” He stared at me a moment, then his eyes fell upon my brown hands that lay upon the tile-topped table. “You know, we Spanish have a bad reputation. You’ve heard of it? The Black Legend…?”

  “Yes,” I said, understanding now why he had stared so intently at my hands. He had suddenly grown color-conscious.

  “We did bad things in South America,” he drawled with a sad smile. He shrugged his shoulders. “But what can these nations do about racialism and colonialism?”

  “Well, they are free, you know.”

  “And just a bare ten years ago they were not free—”

  “That’s it.”

  He laughed uneasily, then looked at me with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “We Spanish were different from the British, the Dutch, the French, and the Belgians…. We married the colored peoples. Look at the mixed-bloods in Mexico and Peru….” He sighed wistfully.

  “You sure did,” I said.

  So it went; worlds were being born and worlds were dying…. In Asia and Africa the leaders of the newly freed nations were meeting to find ways and means of modernizing their countries, to banish fear and superstition, while only yesterday in Sevilla I’d seen thousands of Spanish men, women, and children marching in pagan splendor behind jeweled images of Dying Gods and Suffering Virgins….

  I bade my Spanish friend goodbye and took the night express to Madrid. Once I had settled in my compartment, my mind turned toward the vastness of Asia and its unknown life. Since I had resolved to go to Bandung, the problem of getting to know the Asian personality had been with me day and night. Knowing that I had no factual background to grapple with the swirling currents of the Asian maelstrom, I had weeks before devised a stratagem to enable me to grasp at least the basic Asian attitudes. I had compiled a list of what I felt to be relevant questions to elicit responses bearing on broad, general issues. Ensconced in the wagon-lit, I unpacked my notes and reread my questionnaire and the answers that my Asian informants had given me. My questionnaire had included the following queries:

  How far did you go in school? Were you educated in your youth by missionaries? Have you attended European schools?

  What religion did or do your parents profess? What religion do you profess? Do you feel that the state should sponsor religion? How important was the introduction to Christianity in your country?

  How did you become interested in politics? Did you participate in the liberation movement of your country? Were you ever arrested for political activity? How much time have you served as a political prisoner? Have you ever served in the armed forces of any Western power? Do you think that your country has an enemy? If so, how would you describe him?

  How many international conferences have you attended? What does the Bandung Conference mean to you?

  Do you feel that there is a naturally allotted, irrevocable geographical space for each race on earth? Do you believe that Asia is for Asians, Europe for Europeans, America for Americans, Africa for Africans? How frequently do you read European newspapers? What have your experiences revealed to be the attitudes of Europeans and/or Americans toward your people? How do you think that such attitudes originated? How do you feel that your contacts with the Western world have affected you personally? Have Westerners ever made you feel self-conscious because of your race, religion, color, or culture? Do national inferiority feelings find expression in your country? If so, in what forms? Do you recall in what connection you first heard the phrase “White Man’s Burden,” “Yellow Peril,” “lynch,” “nigger”? What, in your opinion, is the best way to eliminate racism?

  Do you want to see your country industrialized? What do you value most in your culture and how do you propose to save it? How do living standards in your country compare with those of the Western nations?

  Is the racial purity of your family blood important to you? Did you ever desire to marry a European woman (or man)? If so, why didn’t you? Should intermarriage between races be regulated by law? Will you send your children to “national” or European schools?

  Do you feel that Asian and African nations should act as a political bloc?

  How much contact have you with your people? Do you still speak your “native” language fluently? Is or was your city divided into “native” and European quarters? In which quarter have you lived? When the European occupation of your country was over, did your people rename any of your towns, cities, rivers, etc.?

  What is the literacy rate in your country?

  What are the relations today among the new countries of Asia and Africa? If there are tensions, how did they come about? How, in you
r opinion, can such tensions be kept from developing?

  What, in your opinion, is the most urgent problem on the international scene? What do you think of the United Nations? Do you feel that the white nations of the Western world constitute a racial and/or political bloc? Why?

  Stalin is reputed to have once used the phrase, “We Asiatics…”: In your opinion, does that mean that the Russians regard themselves as belonging to Asia? What, in your opinion, do Europeans mean by the designation “colored countries”? Do you regard your country as being “colored”?

  What does Left mean to you? What does Right mean to you?

  Do you feel that a nation is ever justified in using the atom or hydrogen bomb as a military weapon?

  What kind of aid does your country need from Western industrial nations? In what form do you think that such aid should be obtained?

  What, in your opinion, is the meaning of the phrase “democratic opinion”? What, in your opinion, is a “democratic institution”? What, in your opinion, justifies the exercise of state power?

  Do you believe in the possibility of world government? Should the state create trade unions for workers? What, in your opinion, is the best form of government for your country? In your opinion, does social or political change stem from economic or psychological causes?

  Are there any secret societies in your country? If so, are they political or religious?

  Do you think that there is a conflict between the younger and the older generations in your country? If such a conflict exists, what are the causes?

  Do you think that a classless society, in an economic sense, is possible?

  What was the single most important event of the twentieth century?

  If your country were fully developed, what European country would you like your country to resemble? What, in your opinion, was the West’s greatest effect upon your country?

  What, in your opinion, should be the aim of education?

  What is your idea of a great man? What men now living do you call great?

  Do you believe in capital punishment?

  Why, in your opinion, did not the European working class revolt and make revolutions when the Russian Revolution occurred? What do you think of Lenin’s appeal to the people of Asia and Africa for help to defend the Soviet Union?

  Do you feel that the removal of oppressive conditions makes men happy? Do you feel that man needs a universal humanism that can bind men together in a common unity? If so, what culture in the world today seems the most promising candidate to champion such a humanism?

  I had sought reactions to this list from two typical Westerners living in Paris, and I had been surprised to learn that they felt that no or but few Asians would know what the questions were all about. I had seriously doubted that. I had reasoned that if I, an American Negro, had thought of them, then an Asian, meeting the West from the “outside,” so to speak, must surely have thought of them even more. How naive I had been! Little had I suspected that I would have to do no questioning at all, that all I had to do was to show up and the Asians would gush, erupt, and spill out more than they knew. I had used the questionnaire five times, then I had thrown it away…. If I, an American Negro, conscious of my racial and social and political position in the Western world, could misjudge the Asians’ willingness to bare their feelings so completely, how much more, then, must white Westerners misjudge them?

  In my questioning of Asians I had had one tangible factor in my favor, a factor that no white Westerner could claim. I was “colored” and every Asian I had spoken to had known what being “colored” meant. Hence, I had been able to hear Asians express themselves without reserve; they had felt no need to save face before me…. (As a frank and sometimes bitter critic of the Western world, I’ve been frequently dubbed “extreme.”…Well, what I heard from the lips of many Asians startled me, reduced my strictures to the status of a “family quarrel.”…I found that many Asians hated the West with an absoluteness that no American Negro could ever muster. The American Negro’s reactions were limited, partial, centered, as they were, upon specific complaints; he rarely ever criticized or condemned the conditions of life about him as a whole…. Once his particular grievances were redressed, the Negro reverted to a normal Western outlook. The Asian, however, had been taken from his own culture before he had embraced or had pretended to embrace Western culture; he had, therefore, a feeling of distance, of perspective, of objectivity toward the West which tempered his most intimate experiences of the West….)

  As the express train bumped along over the Spanish mountains toward Madrid, I recalled having asked myself how would I be able to tell how important the Asian responses evoked by my questionnaire would be. For a while that problem had me stumped. Then I had hit upon a general solution, a rule-of-thumb guide: I had decided to try to interview an Asian-born European who had once lived in Asia. I had felt that in that way I would get European attitudes to the same realities that constituted Asian life.

  I had been lucky enough to find a young Indonesian-born Dutch journalist who had readily consented to be my guinea pig. He had been more European in attitude than most Europeans; having been born in Indonesia but educated in Holland, he had felt a high degree of consciousness about his European values and possessed a detachment that made for straight answers.

  I summarize his answers to my list of questions in order to make a coherent statement:

  He is twenty-four years of age, married, his wife and children in Holland. He is a university graduate, a Protestant. His ancestors were French Huguenots. He professes no religion and is of the opinion that religion is “an instrument of war, of fighting.” He feels that the introduction of Christianity into Indonesia influenced the people to lead a moral life, yet he says that religion has made the people militant. (When questioned as to whether Indonesians had any idea of “the good” before the Europeans brought in their idea of “the good,” he was quite confused. He assumed a natural European superiority in all phases of life.)

  His interest in politics derives from his concern about what happens to people. He did not participate in the liberation movement of Indonesia, nor did he serve with Dutch troops when those troops tried to put down that movement; he was a student in Holland when those events took place. He has never experienced any penalties, legal or moral, for his political opinions. He has traveled widely in Europe, has dabbled in European philosophical theories, but he has not served in the armed forces of any European nation.

  He does not think that Indonesia has an enemy. The Asian-African Conference concerns him only from a journalistic point of view: it is a project he has to cover.

  Though Indonesian born, he believes in Asia for Asians, Europe for Europeans, America for Americans, and Africa for Africans and feels that such an order of things is “natural.” But, as a European, he prefers to live in Asia! He has many Dutch and Indonesian friends and feels that the Dutch were mainly interested in trade in Indonesia and that that was what conditioned Dutch attitudes towards Indonesians. Contact with the West made the Indonesians feel something that they “had never felt before, made them feel different, that they were not as important as they had thought they were; but the net result of the Indonesians’ contact with the West has been to broaden their outlook on the world and life in general.” He admits that Western contacts have made the Indonesian very self-conscious, but he does not think that there is any evidence of inferiority feelings on the part of the Indonesian, that Indonesian culture does not reflect any such expressions….

  The word “lynch” is English but has been adopted into Dutch and is used to signify that someone must be got rid of by some means, legal or otherwise. He first heard of the phrase “White Man’s Burden” in connection with Dutch colonial policy; the word “nigger” came to him from reading done in an American context; he had never heard of “Yellow Peril.” The best way, in his opinion, to eliminate racism is to find out what causes it and fight it.

  He wants to see Indonesia thoroughly
industrialized, but he wishes that the wood-carving, music, and dancing skills of the people could be saved. “But I’m afraid that that won’t be possible.”

  He feels that the “difference in climate makes impossible any comparison between Indonesian and European standards of living.”

  The purity of his family blood was not important to him; he once wanted to marry an Indonesian girl, but he never found the one he really loved. He does not feel that marriage between the races ought to be regulated by law. He’d never send his children to Indonesian schools. “That’s why they are in Holland now.”

  If necessary, especially if it means peace in the world, Africans and Asians should act as a political bloc. He does not know what the literacy rate is in Indonesia. He says that the Indonesians renamed many of their towns, cities, streets, etc., when the Dutch were driven out. (He attached no importance to this.)

  He knows nothing of the relations between the new Asian countries; he feels that the most urgent problem on the international scene is peace. War is the deepest fear of his life; Communism comes next. The United Nations is a means for keeping peace, but he does not think that it can do so. He feels that Asian and African nations have had their fair share of say-so, authority, and influence in the deliberations of the United Nations. White Western nations should act as a political or racial bloc in order to defeat Communism. Flatly, Russians are Asiatics. European workers felt far too superior to Russian workers to have helped them in their revolution. Lenin’s turning to Asia for help was a “smart move.”

  Countries inhabited by nonwhites are “colored” countries; Indonesia thus is a “colored” country. He is sure that the Indonesians feel this.

  Communist ideology is Left; those who do not like Communism are on the Right.

  There can never be any justification, he feels, for using the atom or hydrogen bomb as a military weapon.

  Indonesia, in his opinion, needs technical aid, loans, machines, exchange of students, etc., from the West. Trade is the means by which these things should be obtained.