Black Power

by Richard Wright

  This “whiteness” of the white world, this “frog perspective,” this pathos of distance that I’ve been describing—these are not static qualities; they have their dynamic aspects which I shall now proceed to present to you.

  Negative Loyalty

  The foremost quality of action which one finds among so many colonial peoples is a kind of negative loyalty to the West among the educated elite. This negative loyalty is a kind of yearning under almost impossible conditions to identify with the values of the white world, since their own traditions have been shattered by that world. Perhaps this yearning to identify with the values of the white world is stronger among American Negroes and West Indian Negroes than any other sections of the colored people in the world. The reason for this is simple: The Negroes in America and in the British West Indies live within the confines of the white cultures that dominate them—cultures that limit and condition their impulses and actions.

  Let me illustrate this from the American Negro point of view. The Negro American is the only American in America who says: “I want to be an American.” More or less all the other Americans are born Americans and take their Americanism for granted. Hence, the American Negro’s effort to be an American is a self-conscious thing. America is something outside of him and he wishes to become part of that America. But, since color easily marks him off from being an ordinary American, and since he lives amidst social conditions pregnant with racism, he becomes an American who is not accepted as an American, hence a kind of negative American.

  The psychological situation resulting from this stance is a peculiar one. The Negro in America is so constantly striving to become an American that he has no time to become or try to become anything else. When he becomes a publisher, he is a “Negro” publisher; when he becomes a physician, he is a “Negro” physician; when he becomes an athlete, he is a “Negro” athlete. This is the answer to the question that so many people have asked about American Negroes: Why do not American Negroes rebel? Aside from the fact that they are a minority and their rebellion would be futile, they haven’t got time to rebel. Why are Negroes so loyal to America? They are passionately loyal because they are not psychologically free enough to be traitors. They are trapped in and by their loyalties. But that loyalty has kept them in a negative position.

  This negative loyalty is widespread also in Asia and Africa. The elite that I’ve met in Asia and Africa were striving desperately to build societies most nearly like those of the Western states. Nkrumah, Nasser, Sukarno, Nehru, are all Western-educated men striving to make a Western dream come true in non-Western conditions of life. They too share with the American Negro certain negative aspects of loyalty. Each of the four men I’ve named has come under heavy criticism by white Westerners. (This tragic problem of the elite I shall deal with a little later.)

  The psychological dynamics of the Westernized non-Westerner, that is Western-trained and educated Asians and Africans, assume truly strange and compounded psychological patterns. The stance of negative loyalty leads to a whole variety of ironic attitudes. I shall describe this reality briefly under the heading of acting.

  Acting

  What? Am I saying that Asians and Africans and colored people in general are good actors? No. I’m not speaking of the theater. I’m saying that the situation of their lives evokes in them an almost unconscious tendency to hide their deepest reactions from those whom they fear would penalize them if they suspected what they really felt. Do I mean to imply that Asians and Africans and American Negroes are not honest people, that they are agents of duplicity? I do not. They are about as honest as anybody else, but they are cautious, wise, and do not wish to bring undue harm upon themselves. Hence, they act. Let me recite an experience of mine. I recently had lunch one day, in Paris, with an Englishman interested in Asia and Africa, and with a West Indian Negro social scientist. The Englishman kept asking me questions about Asians’, Africans’, and American Negroes’ reactions to their plight, and I kept answering quite openly and frankly. I noticed, as I talked, that the West Indian Negro social scientist kept glowering at me, shaking his head, showing acute evidence of something akin to anger. Finally he could contain himself no longer and he blurted out:

  “Wright, why are you revealing all of our secrets?”

  Unwittingly, I had hurt that man. Desperately I sought to allay his feelings. I had thought that we were three free, modern men who could talk openly. But, no. The West Indian Negro social scientist felt that I was revealing racial secrets to the white race.

  “Listen,” I said, “the only secret in Asia and Africa and among oppressed people as a whole is that there is no secret.”

  That did it. He threw up his hands in disgust and exclaimed:

  “You have now revealed the profoundest secret of all!”

  The scope and intensity of this Asian-African and Negro acting depend on the degree of white hostility that they confront. In America, this acting is a perfected system; it is almost impossible for the white man to determine just what a Negro is really feeling, unless that white man, like a Gunnar Myrdal, is gifted with a superb imagination. In a recent interview William Faulkner, Nobel Prize winner, declared that he could not imagine himself a Negro for two minutes! A strange statement to come from a man with an undoubtedly rich imagination. The American Negro’s adversary is next door to him, on the street, on the job, in the school; hence, acting has become almost a second nature with him. This acting regulates the manner, the tone of voice, even, in which most American Negroes speak to white men. The Negro’s voice is almost always pitched high when addressed to a white man; all hint of aggressiveness is purged from it. In some instances an educated Negro will try to act as uneducated as possible in order not to merit rebuff from whites.

  In Asia and Africa this acting exists, but in a looser form. Not being as intimately related to the Western white man in their daily lives as the American Negro, the Asian and African do not need to practice this dissimulation to the degree that the American Negro does. Yet it is there. There are Asians and Africans who, when confronting whites, will swear proudly that they have never felt any racial feelings at all, that such feelings are beneath them, and will proceed to act in a Western manner. Yet, when alone or among themselves, they will confess their feelings freely and bitterly. I believe that it was only at Bandung that the full content of Asian and African racial feelings were expressed publicly and for the first time in all their turgid passion. They were among themselves and could confess without shame.

  This “acting” is one of the secrets that my West Indian social scientist did not want me to talk about. He felt that I was making the Negro, the Asian, and the African transparent, vulnerable to white attack. On the other hand, it is my conviction that the sooner all of these so-called secrets are out in the open, the sooner both sides, white and colored, realize the shadows that hem them in, the quicker sane and rational plans can be made. Let us go one step further into this business of secrets.

  The educated Asian, African, or American Negro who longs to escape his debased position, who longs to have done with acting, who longs to convert his negative loyalty into something positive, will encounter ideology sponsored by labor leaders or revolutionaries, the most powerful and appealing of which is that of Marxism. In short, one minority section of the white society in or under which he lives will offer the educated elite of Asia and Africa or black America an interpretation of the world which impels to action, thereby assuaging his feelings of inferiority. Nine times out of ten it can be easily pointed out that the ideology offered has no relation to the plight of the educated black, brown or yellow elite. Yet, what other road is there out of his Black Belt? His captured homeland? His racial prison? But that ideology does solve something. It lowers the social and racial barriers and allows the trapped elite of Asia and Africa and black America the opportunity to climb out of its ghetto. In Asia almost all the national revolutionaries I met had received aid from the hands of Marxists in their youth. The same was
true of the black politicians of the Gold Coast, even though Marxism did not even remotely pertain to their non-industrial society. The same is true of the Negro in the United States where there prevailed an absurd theory, Marxist in origin, that the Negro constituted a separate nation.

  Ideology as Intimacy

  The fear inspired by white domination breeds a tendency, as I have said, to make Asians and Africans act, pretend. And this same almost unconscious tendency to pretension will spur them to pretend to accept an ideology in which they do not believe. They accept it in order to climb out of their prisons. Many a black boy in America has seized upon the rungs of the Red ladder to climb out of his Black Belt. And well he may, if there are no other ways out of it. Hence, ideology here becomes a means towards social intimacy.

  Yes, I know that such a notion is somewhat shocking. But it is true. And in your heart, you know it’s true. Many an African in Paris and London, and many a Negro in New York and Chicago, crossed the class and racial line for the first time by accepting the ideology of Marxism, whether he really believed it or not. The role of ideology here served as a function; it enabled the Negro or Asian or African to meet revolutionary fragments of the hostile race on a plane of equality. No doubt the oppressed, educated young man said to himself: “I don’t believe in this stuff, but it works.” In the Gold Coast young revolutionary Africans told me that, as soon as they had gained their freedom, they were going to erect a statue to the English white woman, thereby celebrating friendships that had redeemed days and weeks of loneliness. “If it had not been for them, we would have lost,” they told me.

  Resistance

  Now, the most natural reaction, the most human response, to the revelation I’ve just made is to reject it and declare that no such psychological reaction exists. And the tendency to deny psychological traits of the sort I’ve just revealed leads me to my next concept: Resistance. There is a state of mind among the elite of Asia and Africa and the Negroes of America to reject that which they imagine hurts, degrades, or shames them. It is painful to realize that one is not free enough to make clean and honest decisions, that one has to “use” ideologies for one’s own personal benefit. It is a state of mind that compels people to protect themselves against truths that wound; it is a deep, unconscious mechanism that prompts one to evade, deny, or seek explanations for problems other than those that prevail, for one does not wish to acknowledge a state of affairs that induces a loss of face.

  I had the experience in both Asia and Africa of receiving intimate, unprompted confessions of how Indonesians felt about the Dutch, of how the Africans felt about the British, but as soon as those confessions appeared in print, there were hasty and passionate denials on the part of the very men who had given me their confessions.

  Oppressed people have two sets of feelings: one for home consumption and one for export. I must say in all fairness that this duality of attitude has really aided the Asian and African in his dealing with white Westerners. In almost every instance of colonial revolt, the white Westerner has had absolutely no inkling of the revolt until it burst over his head, so carefully hidden had the rebels kept their feelings and attitudes. In short, oppression helps to forge in the oppressed the very qualities that eventually bring about the downfall of the oppressor.

  Flight into the Past

  Not all evasion or resistance on the part of the subject people is so positive. Much of it is a flight into useless identification. One hears much in America about “Negro genius” one hears much in Africa about vanished “glories of past empires” in Asia one hears much of “our wonderful traditions that go back a thousand years.” All of this, of course, is an attempt to prove that, though smarting under a sense of inferiority, they are the equals of those who oppress them. If the present is painful, then seek shelter in the warm womb of the past.

  Let us push on into this uncharted area of human reactions and discover even more fantastic mental landscapes. Let us recall the “frog perspective” let us recall the tendency to “act” let us remember the will to resist the acknowledgment of facts that cause pain, and the tendency to retire to the haven of past “glories.” In the light of all this, is it surprising that one discovers that religion among oppressed peoples is no longer a way of determining one’s relation to the world, but has turned into a way of asserting pride? How can one’s religion turn into pride?

  The white West entered the vast continents of Asia, Africa, and even the Americas in the name of religion. (Of course, they took a lot of gold and silver and slaves while preaching religion, but it was in the name of religion that their actions were rationalized.) After five hundred years of white Western domination in the name of a superior religion, I found the ancient religions among the masses in those areas more or less intact. How is that possible? There was no doubt but that the missionaries had labored hard. There was no doubt but that the Asians and Africans had been converted by the hundreds of thousands to the Christian church. How was it then, that after five hundred years, the delegates at Bandung passed a resolution to resurrect their old religions and cultures and modernize them? Obviously, those religions were never really dead.

  At the world conference of black writers, artists and intellectuals in Paris, in September 1956, the main and only resolution called for the rehabilitation of their ancient cultures and religions! And, more significant, at that conference African Christians launched an attack upon Christianity, calling for its de-Europeanization. In other words, the religious tie between Africa and Europe was under vigorous attack not by Communists, but by African Christians themselves. Why?

  Well, let your minds go back a little. Remember the burden of the message carried by the Christian missionaries into Asia and Africa? The Asian and African felt that the Christianity in whose name he had been conquered was really his own religion slightly disguised! Here is how he looked at it. Christianity came from one and perhaps unrepeatable historical accident that was compounded in Rome from Greek science and love of human personality, from Jewish notions of a One and Indivisible God, from Roman conceptions of law and order and property, and from a perhaps-never-to-be unraveled amalgamation of Eastern and African religions with their endless gods who were perpetually sacrificed and their endless virgins who gave birth perennially.

  (May I add here, quite frankly, that, in part, I agree that some of the work of the missionary was good: I agree that his boiling down four hundred gods and six hundred devils into one God and one Devil was an advance. But I don’t think that the missionaries’ efforts went far enough; they should have reduced the whole problem to a psychological project.)

  When Christianity met the so-called pagan religions of Asia and Africa, there was a strange result. How could Asia and Africa reject a militant Christian religion, at least, upon its initial impact? There was too much in that Christian religion that the Asian and African had believed in long before the Christian religion ever came to their shores, for it had been from the shores of Asia and Africa that these powerful legends, myths, images, symbols, and rituals had originally come. But the return of Christianity to the place of its birth was no peaceful homecoming; it came with fire in its eyes, a sword in its hands, and with the will to conquer and despoil. Why, then, did the elite in Asia and Africa accept it? When I put this question to an African scholar in the Gold Coast three years ago, I got the following answer:

  “We’ve got four hundred gods. Jesus Christ. God number 401.”

  What happened was quite simple. When the white Westerner, armed and powerful, received a submissive attitude from the Asian and African, he took it for granted that the Asian or African had accepted his religion. The Asian and African had pretended to accept it to stave off attack, to receive petty favors. But the building of railroads, factories, and mines in the colonies, and the introduction of wage-rate labor, and the general spread of secular ideas, ate slowly away at the native religions, not destroying them completely, but rendering them truncated.

  Despite the fact that
his old, ancestral religions were made useless, made a mockery, the Asian and African never really abandoned them. He kept his religion to show that he was still a human being. Religion became a matter of human pride. The white man said: “I have the only one and true religion.” The Asian and African replied, silently to be sure, but nonetheless passionately, “We have a religion too.”*

  Industrialization Becomes Religion

  But, in time, a new religion replaced the truncated one. The Asian and African saw that techniques and industrialization had enabled the white man to enter his land and, in hoping for freedom, he found that the only road out was to embrace techniques and industrialization. Indeed, industrialization soon became the new religion, not because industrialization itself was loved or revered as a means of production, but because it was the only way to hoist the white man off his back.

  Do you not see how facts change their aspects, their meaning, under the pressure of oppression? So strong and widespread is this tendency for facts to be seen by the oppressed from a special point of view that I’ve called this a Metamorphosis of Facts. Religion turns into pride. Industrialization turns into religion. Race consciousness emerges as shame and bitter defiance. And in many instances sexuality assumes the means by which status is gauged, permitting men or women to marry into certain social milieux where they will feel that their degradation will be redeemed.