Black Power

by Richard Wright

  Need I remind you that the emotional and psychological reactions of the oppressed are bewildering in their complexity? It simply means that oppression oppresses, that oppression takes its toll, that it leaves a mark behind. Now there are Asians and Africans, American and West Indian Negroes, who will wish to deny that oppression cuts as sharply and deeply into their hearts as I’ve outlined. But their denial of this is in itself proof of its truth, for their denial of what they feel under oppression is proof that oppression oppresses.

  The Unity of Man

  Environmental buffetings, crass racial distinctions, class discriminations, uprootings caused by migration, continual disillusionments, imprisonment for rebellious acts—all these hammer blows need not always produce shattered or mangled personalities. Sifting through such grinding social sieves are some whose characters are singularly free and whose apprehension of life is broad indeed. (I’m not implying that mistreatment and injustice ennoble character! Adversity, at times, crushes as well as molds; it would seem that if there is a latent predilection toward meanness, pressure will heighten it, and, conversely, if there is a tendency toward breadth and scope of outlook, pressure can release or aid its development.) It has been almost only among Asians and Africans of an artistic stamp and whose background has consisted of wars, revolutions, and harsh colonial experience that I’ve found a sense of the earth belonging to, and being the natural home of, all the men inhabiting it, an attitude that went well beyond skin color, races, parties, classes, and nations. On the other hand, I’ve heard Western whites declare frequently and with firm conviction that they felt that Africa was for the blacks, Asia was for the yellows and browns, and that Europe was for the whites, meaning, of course, that the past domination of Europe over those Asian-African areas was natural and justified by the racial structure of life and history itself, since both have reflected, during the past five hundred years, the supremacy of whites.

  Amid some Asian-African scholastic circles, I found that Western scientific thought had encouraged some rare men toward a healthy skepticism not only of Christianity, but toward all traditional ideas. Striking advances in the realms of anthropology and Freudian psychology have stressed not as much the old-time diversities among men that the colonials and nineteenth-century scientists loved to insist upon, but the remarkable and growing body of evidence of the basic emotional kinship, empirically established, of all men and of all races. Today many of the scholars of Asia and Africa (a minority, to be sure, for I’ve found that psychological facts do not sit well upon the mentalities of oppressed people!) are beginning to feel a lessening of distance between themselves and the Western world. Indeed, I’d say that there exists in a given number of Asian and African intellectuals a profounder grasp of the psychology of the white Westerner than you would find among a comparable number of Western intellectuals toward the Asian and African. It is amusing and instructive to hear a Westernized African poet say, with pardonable superiority and pride born of detached insight:

  “They call us uncivilized. But just read a volume of psychoanalytic case histories of white people! All of the culture of so-called barbaric Africa is reenacted on a couch in a psychoanalytic office when a New York white man pours out his dreams, paying $20 an hour for the honor of doing so. Our tribes say and do the same things each day for the fun of it.”

  In all fairness it must be emphasized that this as yet budding sense of “the unity of man” is confined to a minority of minorities; but, despite the fragility of this universal outlook, it indicates a political vista that needs must be mentioned here. The present leaders of the newly independent Asian-African states have come under daily and bitter criticism in the press of the Western world; they have been branded as “wild-eyed,” “neutrals,” “immoralists,” and “unappreciative of the danger of Communism.” What the Western press does not realize is that the delicately poised elite in these areas represents the only real bastions of Western thought beyond the confines of the West. If these few Western-minded leaders are overthrown, it is absolutely certain that their successors will be infinitely more anti-Western than they are. The closer the West approaches the Asian and African masses, the more exclusive, shy, evasive, and militantly racial and nationalistic it will find those masses to be. This is but another way of saying that the present Asian-African leadership is one that can continue to talk to the West in terms of Western concepts and within a Western frame of reference, no matter how many hot disputes may take place about ends and means.

  I know that some romantic-and regressive-minded Westerners would prefer to deal with a more pliable and less intransigent Asian-African elite. But they will discover, to their sharp dismay, that this “softer” elite will have little or no influence over the illiterate masses who are still captured by their ancestral or mystical religious systems. Those Asian-African leaders who can grasp “the unity of man” are few, and the bare fact that there exist even a few possessing global and humane visions is really a kind of miracle (especially when one recalls the past recent history of the West in those areas!), a boon that the West should think hard upon before dismissing in disdain or racial scorn.

  Lay Priests

  The Asian-African leader is often far more conscious of his relation to his people than a Westerner is to his. The non-Westerner knows that he is functionally the direct descendant of the priest, the mystic, the saint, the chief, “the fathers of the people.” Hence, though ofttimes lacking official sanction for his position, he wields a kind of power that the Western mind finds difficult to grasp. A Nkrumah, a Nasser, a Nehru, all of whom hold official offices, speak with an authority that goes beyond the mandates of elections; indeed, the official posts which they now hold were gained only after they had conquered the hearts of their people. And these Asian-African stand-ins for priestly powers know that when they meet Western engineers, bankers, industrialists, scientists, etc., they are regarded with distrust, suspicion, if not the downright scorn that is reserved for “eggheads.”

  The most powerful public organs in Asia and Africa are often not government-sponsored bodies at all, but are, on the contrary, government-creating bodies—the Western procedure being turned upsidedown in non-Western countries. The “leader” and his movement exercise a power that is above that of law. And it is safe to assume that this quasi-religious atmosphere will prevail until more secular ground has been won from the traditional institutions and a body of pragmatic experience has accumulated in the daily lives of the people.

  The role of Asian-African “lay priests” is extremely difficult and complicated; they function in a situation that facilitates the mischief-making efforts of their Communist competitors who seek to win converts at their expense, promising quicker results, inflaming class feelings long before the issue of national independence is resolved. Educated for the most part in Russia, speaking the language of the common people, enjoying the most intimate contacts with the masses, projecting their missionary ideas in terms of the people’s daily lives, the Communist agitator fills a vacuum by rushing in where more prudent nationalists would hesitate. The Asian-African nationalist elite often finds itself in an odd position of having to battle a species of home-grown Communism on the one hand, and a futile striving to win Western understanding, approval, and support on the other. Many times it turns from both sides in desperation, with an attitude of: “A plague on both your houses.”

  Post-Mortem Terror

  I’d like now to move towards a more minute examination of this question and I’d like to confine my remarks mainly to consciousness of the elite of Asia, Africa, and the West Indies, for it is in this elite, educated in the West, and, for the most part, more Western than the West, that the truly tragic aspects of oppression can be seen and measured. I know that it is popular today to say that every square inch of human existence is wholly economic. That is easy, too easy. It’s a good organizing slogan, but it is no guide when it comes to examining and weighing the human issues and attitudes involved.

 
As the waters of Western imperialism recede from the land masses of Asia and Africa, and when we begin to study the residue left behind, we shall find some strange formations indeed. The first curious fact that I’d like to call to your attention is that, though recently freed, many lands—Indonesia, Ceylon, Burma, India, the Gold Coast—are more profoundly upset, filled with more fear and unrest than obtained even when the colonizing power was there in all of its brutal glory. Why is this? Why is Indonesia not only socially and economically disorganized, but emotionally and psychologically upset? I’ve called this strange state of mind: Post-Mortem Terror. What do I mean by that?

  It is a state of mind of newly freed colonial peoples who feel that they will be resubjugated; that they are abandoned, that no new house of the heart is as yet made for them to enter. They know that they do not possess the necessary tools and arms to guarantee their freedom. Hence, their terror in freedom, their anxiety right after their liberation, is greater than when under the dominance of the superior Western power. Many people have misread this phenomenon and said that the people were unhappy because the Western white man had gone. How silly. Their unrest stems from a fear that the white man will come back, and from the cold void in which they are suspended. Of course, this acute unrest, this thrashing about for a new security, is mainly confined to the elite that can see and know what the issues and odds are.

  The Concept of Interference

  What is the burden of consciousness of this elite? It looks at the powerful West and then looks at the weakness of its own lands and feels that some dire and drastic move must be made to equalize the situation. What move can they make? They wish to do all those things that will make their lands the equal of the Western lands, for only in that way can they feel safe. But what does that involve? This elite, you must remember, lives surrounded by powerful traditions stretching back into the remote past. It knows that any move it makes to extend the area of industrialization will be passively resisted by those of their own people who do not know the modern world as well as they do, who do not feel their sense of urgency.

  Hence, this Asian-African elite, in its state of what I’ve called Post-Mortem Terror, wishes to interfere with the religion and traditions of its land and its people. They are impelled to interfere quickly, drastically, decisively, and break the force of religion and tradition and create secular ground for the building of rational societies. But something holds them back. What is it? Two forces hamper and hinder them. First, this elite was educated in the West and has grown used to gradual methods of social evolution. Second, the white Westerner stands looking critically at this new elite and warns: “Don’t act like fascists toward your own people!”

  I wonder if the white Western world can appreciate this agony. I’ve called it: “The Caul of Indecision.”

  The Caul of Indecision

  Before this issue, the oppressed elite sweats. A man belonging to this elite argues. He questions himself. He fears the return of the West, yet he feels that he needs the West. I will cite a few examples of how the elite seeks to solve this all important problem. In the United States just after World War I, Marcus Garvey rose to leadership among the American Negroes and proposed the creation of all-black nationalism based on color, racial pride; his aim was to settle the American Negroes again in Africa and build an industrial state. His scheme failed mainly for two reasons: it was premature, and the Negroes in America felt themselves more psychologically identified with America than with Africa.

  In the Gold Coast we see Nkrumah trying to forge tribes into a unity based on modern political concepts, and we can see today the degree to which his efforts clash bitterly, bloodily, with the traditions and ambitions of Ashanti tribal life. Whether Nkrumah will be successful or not only the future will tell. (He has so far been successful.) In Indonesia the new government under Sastroamidjojo* has called for compulsory national service in order to step up the rate of industrialization and rehabilitation. In India, Nehru has had to set the guns of his police against the reactionary claims of tribes whose outlook falls far behind that of the Western-educated elite. These actions are tragic. Where does the white West stand in this matter? With the tribes! With superstition! With the noble savage! Imagine! The West sides with the tribes against the men whom it educated. They now find the naked tribal man a noble, wonderful creature. How selfish can you get? The West has had five hundred years to protect those tribes. I say let the elite try a bit.

  But let’s examine this tragic conflict between the Western elite of Asia and Africa and their own populations. It can be stated without fear of contradiction that it would not exist if that elite did not have bitter memories and fears of the Western white man. The reason for this brutal push of the elite against its own people stems from fear that if they do not quickly modernize their countries, the white man will return. So, instead of democracy obtaining in the newly freed areas, something hinting of dictatorship will no doubt prevail for a while—will prevail at least until fear of the West has died down.

  Listen to what Gunnar Myrdal, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for the United Nations, says:

  “If, as is assumed to be an urgent necessity in the underdeveloped countries, the movement toward industrialization is to be pushed ahead, the state* will have to intervene in the field of manufacturing…not only creating the external economies and supplying transport and power, but often also organizing the marketing of the produce of the expanding industrial sector, providing facilities for training workers, foremen, and technicians on all levels, as well as business executives, giving managerial advice, making capital available, often subsidizing or protecting new industrial enterprises, and sometimes actually establishing and operating them. At the same time it must have as its principal objective not only the development of industrialization to its practical limits, but also its direction, so that the growth is balanced and met by effective demand.”

  Sounds like the blueprint for a Soviet, huh? Is Gunnar Myrdal perverse in assigning so powerful a role to the state? Well, either plans like this are followed, or stagnation lingers on and bloody revolution comes. The road to freedom might well lead through stern mountain paths. And, mind you, Myrdal gives this advice to keep those men of the elite in Asia and Africa in the camp of democracy! Paradoxical, but it’s true.

  Did this notion of interfering with the lives of their own people stem from an innate cruelty on the part of the elite of Asia and Africa? No. And there’s the joker. What this elite seeks to impose in Asia and Africa derives from the concepts they learned in Western schools. This elite learned how Europe, during the Reformation, had rolled back the tide of religion and had established the foundations of the modern state, secular institutions, free speech, science, etc. And what this Asian and African elite is now trying to do, under conditions far more difficult than obtained in Europe, is to rebuild their lands quickly, in terms of self-defense.

  Do I make this point clear? The sense of urgency that rides the elite of Asia and Africa so desperately stems from a feeling that if they do not measure up almost overnight, they will again be swallowed up in what they feel will be a new slavery. This was the fundamental mood of Bandung.

  (Not long ago I had the opportunity to mention this widespread notion of interference to an audience in Paris, and some young man, imbued with absolutistic thought, rose and denounced me for advocating American intervention in Asia and Africa! Which goes to show how propaganda can mislead and blind people.)

  The Cult of Sacrifice

  Let us follow this tragic theme of the elite a little more. Since the newly freed Asian and African nations do not possess enough technical power, they must needs often reckon their strength in terms of human sacrifices. Indeed, sacrifice, deliberate and intentional, has become a means of political struggle. One of the cardinal traits of the national revolutionary is to anticipate in advance the cost of the liberation of his land in terms of human life and physical suffering. Since he is faced with a Western world that stubbo
rnly clings to the idea that God Himself has given it the right to rule the “lesser breed,” the elite of Asia and Africa has no other choice but the embracing of this melancholy outlook, as depressing as it is.

  It is to be noted that at Bandung President Sukarno pointed out in his opening address the role that sacrifice had played in the struggle against imperialist domination.

  Indeed, this mentality of sacrifice lingers on even after the colonial area wins its freedom. In fact, in many instances the freed colonial subject will react in terms of his former situation. He feels that all his actions ought to carry punitive measures, penalties, so used has he grown to feeling and thinking of enduring chastisement for his rebellious acts. This almost masochistic tendency makes him rush forward to embrace all the threats that the white West could possibly hurl at him. Hence, military threats are discounted in their minds in advance. I found in Asia and Africa that the degree of suffering that a leader had undergone at the hands of Western whites was a definition of his standing as a hero. Mrs. Pandit told me at Bandung that it was the years that Nehru had spent in jail that were now enabling Nehru to hold the Hindu millions in a state of unity while the nation was being rebuilt. In Indonesia some of the highest posts of government could be won only by those men who had a past record of imprisonment. In the Gold Coast the party in power marched into the National Assembly wearing the caps that they had worn while behind jail bars.

  But is all of this as negative as I have so far stated it? I’ve shown more or less the reaction of the Asian and African to the white West, its past domination and present pressures. Are there no positive elements of a psychological nature in this Asian-African reaction? There are indeed positive psychological motives. I shall attempt to list some of them.