Black Power

by Richard Wright

  The Nuclear Revolutionary Motive

  At the top of this list I shall place what I have called the Nuclear Revolutionary Motive. Just what does this clumsy phrase mean? I shall here try to spell out something that has gone almost unnoticed in the Western world. What was the main impact of the West upon Asia and Africa? I know that Marxists will say that it was economic. Non-Marxists will say that it was Christianity. Academic men will try to persuade us that there was a mixture, a synthesis of East and West involved. Here, I propose to advance another concept to account for this impact of the West upon Asia and Africa, a concept that cuts down beneath the other answers. I maintain that the ultimate effect of white Europe upon Asia and Africa was to cast millions into a kind of spiritual void; I maintain that it suffused their lives with a sense of meaninglessness. I argue that it was not merely physical suffering or economic deprivation that has set over a billion and a half colored people in violent political motion. I further maintain that a mere class identification is not sufficient to describe manifestations such as Bandung, for it must be remembered that modern class relations and proletarian class consciousness do not exist in many of the societies of Asia and Africa.

  The present-day attitude of the national revolutionary in Asia and Africa has the quality of a man who has been put to sleep for centuries and awakens to find the world of which he was once a functioning part roaring past him. He is bewildered, hurt, stunned, filled with a sense of self-hate at the trick he feels has been played upon him. He and his kind are many; his adversaries are relatively few in number. The world that such a man sees is devoid of meaning. He looks into this or that theory to find an idea of what has happened to him and his kind. And when he selects a theory, whether it be Marxism or any other revolutionary doctrine, he is not so much concerned emotionally with whether that theory is right or wrong, but whether it fits his feelings and most nearly describes what he sees and feels. Does it fill that aching void in him? Indeed, I’ll go so far as to say that, psychologically, theories here are but excuses, justifications, rationalizations for actions. Here we come to that strange frontier where we can say that motive becomes ideology.

  Have I been understood? What I’m saying is this: I’m presenting you with a picture that turns the usual view of this matter upside down. I state that emotion here precedes the idea, that attitudes select the kind of ideas in question. This is the void that the West has induced in the Asian and African elite and the filling of that void is with ideas THAT MOST NEARLY ANSWER THE NEED. The idea that is accepted usually depends upon which idea gets there first!

  The dynamic concept of the void that must be filled, a void created by a thoughtless and brutal impact of the West upon a billion and a half people, is more powerful than the concept of class conflict, and more universal.

  I know that there are those of you who will bridle at this assertion. Perhaps you will feel that I’m devaluing the passion felt by national revolutionaries, and that I’m painting the Western white man as a brutal idiot. I’m not trying to do any such thing. I say that, upon sound reflection, if you get rid of some of your preconceptions, you will see that this concept of the void-to-be-filled can be equated to a raison d’être, a justification for living.

  It is interesting to recall that Khrushchev’s recent visit to India resulted in the Russian Communist leader’s making a significant admission. He said that Gandhi had made a most important contribution to the national liberation struggle in India. Now, many of us had known that little fact for a long, long time, but it took a personal visit of Khrushchev to find it out. In India millions felt that the British method of rule was nullifying their very sense of life, and they, under Gandhi’s guidance, organized to oppose it. What happened? Gandhi did not get what he wanted. He organized India to resist British industrialization and ironically he thereby launched India upon the road of industrialization. Gandhi was dealing with processes that far outstripped his own imagination.

  Let me call to your attention some of the traits of this void in Asia and Africa.

  Men Without Language

  The elite of Asia and Africa are truly men without language. I do not mean that they do not speak their own native tongues; I do not mean that they do not speak the language of the European countries that dominated their lands for so long. It is psychological language that I speak of. For these men there is a “hole” in history, a storm in their hearts that they cannot describe, a stretch of centuries whose content has been interpreted only by white Westerners. The seizure of his country, its subjugation, the introduction of military rule, another language, another religion—all of these events existed without his interpretation of them. Even when he sends his children to school in Europe he knows that they will be taught his country’s past in a manner that he disapproves. Put differently, one can say that at this point the elite has no vocabulary of history. What has happened to him is something about which he has yet to speak.

  One day in Indonesia an educator and writer said to me:

  “How I envy you.”

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “The English language is your mother tongue,” he told me.

  “That’s true,” I said.

  “You can appeal, as a writer, to a vast, world-wide audience,” he went on.

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “But, Goddammit, they taught us Dutch!” he stormed. “What can I say in Dutch? To whom can I speak?”

  He seethed. Both of us were historical victims of a sort. He had been taught Dutch and I had been taught English. This Indonesian writer and educator was leading the crusade for the rehabilitation of his old language, Bahasa Malay, as the national language of his country. This man felt it was preferable for his children to speak a language that would enable them to appeal eventually to seventy million Indonesians than to learn Dutch which would allow them communication with nine million people in a tiny dull European country called Holland.

  It is almost impossible for a white Westerner to realize some of the facts that make non-Westerners angry and resentful.

  The Zone of Silence

  Ofttimes the elite is silent. There’s a spell of quiet that comes over him when he sees that the point of view of the imperial power dominates the values of culture and life. The world confronting him negates his humanity, but he feels that it is useless to protest with words. Only a complete reversal of the economic and political situation can give him back his birthright, can enable him to speak, to allow him to grasp a language, a vocabulary, that he can feel is his own.

  The State of Exaggeration

  Obviously, any elite reacting to the kind of reality I’ve sketched here will find itself reacting violently. One of the aspects of life of the American Negro that has amazed observers is the emotional intensity with which he attacks ordinary, daily problems. When an American Negro tries to rent a house and is refused, he will react far more violently than a white who tries to rent the same house and is refused. Is this biological? No. The Negro can always feel that his refusal was based on color. The political rallies of the African Gold Coast reached an intensity of passion that actually frightened Europeans who did not realize that these political rallies were not just politics, but attempts at forging a new way of life. The devotion and fervor that characterized the organization at Bandung reduced Western observers to silence and fear. And the vast crowds that attended the recent Asian tour of Khrushchev and Bulganin rendered a homage to an industrialized Russia that was non-ideological in origin.

  Is it not clear that we are dealing here with attitudes that go beyond a mere reacting to local or limited events? These reactions go beyond mere politics; they involve the total attitudes of the men concerned.

  Recoil and Self-Possession

  In many instances racists or colonial administrators justified their harsh methods on the grounds that, once their rule was lifted, there would be a disorganized and aggressive surge forward on the part of the black and brown and yellow men. In the American South, the whi
te racists contended that, once all Jim Crow laws were repealed, the blacks would leap through windows and rape their wives and daughters. But, in Alabama, when the United States Supreme Court declared the Jim Crow practices on the buses unconstitutional, there was no wild rush forward on the part of the Alabama blacks. Instead, those blacks put forward a demand that they be allowed to organize and operate their own bus companies! In this instance, how could the whites have so completely misread the reality that lay so plainly in the black minds? On one hand, the whites had projected out upon the blacks their own guilt, fears, and sexual preoccupations. On the other, the blacks wished a respite from their bruising contacts with whites, sought a period in which they could take stock of what they really wanted.

  In the Gold Coast the Britishers were always alarmed when the Africans went off by themselves to hold their political rallies and were constantly asking: “What did they say? What are they planning? Don’t they want partnership?”

  At Bandung the proud Australians were in the embarrassing position of chiding Indonesians and Indians and Africans for having excluded them from the greatest international conference that ever took place in Asia in modern times.

  I’ve been informed by reliable international experts that in New Delhi the white ambassadors of European nations fret and fume because they do not have easy access to a tan-skinned Nehru who spent a third of his adult life in prison under white jailers.

  Because I’ve pointed out these tendencies to recoil and self-possession on the part of Asians and Africans, some critics have sought to brand me a racist. This is a primitive reaction and is akin to accusing a messenger who brings you bad news of having created the bad news he brings.

  This Asian-African recoil and withdrawal have many determinations, the most distinctive and powerful of which is to reorganize their lives in accordance with their own basic feelings. The truncated religious structure comes again to the fore and reasserts itself, much to the astonishment of Europeans. The conference of black artists and writers recently concluded in Paris by Présence Africaine is a vivid example of this stocktaking on the part of the elite of the black world. It is a recoil and withdrawal prompted by psychological necessity, but it is far from being a negative gesture. It is a regrouping of psychological forces for constructive action—psychological forces that have been scattered and paralyzed for centuries.

  The last psychological aspect I’d like to discuss with you shall be under the listing of:

  The Mystique of Numbers

  Lacking modern techniques and arms to secure them from invasion or resubjugation, the newly freed Asian and African elite shies off from the urgent and insistent suggestion of white Western social scientists to limit, reduce, or control their populations. We all know that modern medicines, modern methods of sanitation, and new techniques of production enable tropical populations to increase so rapidly that they quickly outstrip the capacity of the means of production—even when those means of production are being aided by outside forces. But when Westerners urge birth control and other methods of limiting populations upon Asians and Africans, they are heard with considerable reserve. I propose to discuss, however briefly, some of the psychological motives back of that reserve.

  The most powerful element here, of course, is the religious background of Asia and Africa, a background of worshipful regard for ancestors. Children are not only new members of the community, but are viewed in the light of reincarnations of past family members. Hence, the Asian or African is likely to listen with a poker face to the white social scientist when he argues passionately for a reduction or a limitation of the population of his country.

  Facing superior arms, the Asian-African elite is likely to feel that, the more of his kind there is around him, the better off he is. And, as the white social scientist points out the advantages in terms of higher standards of living that will accrue if he limits his population, the Asian or African will ask himself uneasily: “Why does he wish that we were not so numerous?”

  The Asian-African suspects bad faith in this argument, and I believe that he is right. It can be argued that the West is ethically dubious when it urges upon Asians and Africans concepts or principles that the West discovered only accidentally and under conditions far different from those that obtain in Asia and Africa.

  It is well-known that the populations of the West are relatively smaller than those of Asia and Africa. But those low populations of the West did not come about through deliberate efforts on the part of the West. They were the consequences of complicated social, economic, and cultural factors. It would be safe to say that there will be no limiting or control of Asian or African populations until there prevail in Asia and Africa more or less the same conditions that obtain in the West. And, when that time comes, there will be no need for Western social scientists to urge a reduction of populations upon Asian and African leaders.

  An examination of the population problem will reveal a common attitude existing among all people apprehensive about their future and afraid of attack. The Russians boast of their 200 million. The Chinese boast of their 600 million.* Africa is proud of her 170 million. At Bandung no delegate rose to speak without paying tribute to the fact that the conference represented a billion and a half people. It can be seen that population here is regarded in the light of a protective weapon.

  We have been tramping through an unknown country. In this chapter I’ve tried to indicate the main peaks and valleys. This listing of psychological reactions is by no means complete. In raising this subject I’m trying to spur others to plunge in and make explorations.

  Psychological facts have about them an air of the derogatory. But this is only seemingly so. You must realize that what I’ve called Asian and African psychological facts are such only in a contingent sense. They are human reactions, and, as such, they belong to everybody. White men under the conditions I’ve described would have reacted more or less the same. I have not raised these questions in order to deny, demean, or criticize the reactions I’ve cited. These reactions are human, all too human.

  I challenge Europe to be strong enough to admit and accept this revolution that she cast into the world, however unconsciously, stupidly, misguidedly, and clumsily she did it. Like a sleepwalker, Europe blundered into the house of mankind, nullifying ancient traditions that sustained and informed the lives of millions with meaning, shattering the mental crystallizations of centuries and sending black, brown, and yellow men hurtling toward horizons as yet distant and dim. The Western world has, through sheer selfishness and racial jealousy, lost a vital part of this revolution to Communism, for, when called upon to confess authorship of her own principles, she rejected them and called them forgeries.

  The historical hour is late, too late for guns, too late for armies even. If we would have a free world, only an awakened and chastened Europe can sanction it, can give the word. Europe must admit the role she has played in history, the noble as well as the base aspects of that role. Europe must be big enough to accept its Descartes and its Cortés and what they did. Europe must be big enough to accept its Hume of England and its Leopold II of Belgium and what they did. It must possess enough stern responsibility to accept both its Goethe and its Hitler. Is the spirit of Europe big enough to admit and contain and resolve these contradictions? If it is, our world can be saved. If it is not, our world is lost. And the world that we save or lose is a bigger world than we are, and our last one.

  It can be said that the white man is at bay. Never have so few hated and feared so many. What I dread is that the Western white man, confronted with an implacably militant Communism on the one hand, and with a billion and a half colored people gripped by surging tides of nationalist fanaticism on the other, will feel that only a vengeful unleashing of atom and hydrogen bombs can make him feel secure. I dread that there will be an attempt at burning up millions of people to make the world safe for the “white man’s” conception of existence, to make the ideas of Mill and Hume and Locke good for all people, a
t all times, everywhere. There is no doubt that atom or hydrogen bombs can destroy much of human life on this earth. If the white West should attack the body of mankind in this fashion, it will not only sacrifice its own civilization, but will set off reactions of racial and religious hatreds that will last for generations. In trying in this manner to make the world safe for their own kind only, the white West will wipe out of men’s minds the undoubtedly glorious contributions that it has made to human life on this earth. In that instance, the only possible winner can be Communism. And if Communism wins under such stupid conditions, its victory will have been given to it by the racial jealousies of the Western world, jealousies which make the West feel that it would rather have no world at all than to share it, living and letting live, giving and taking.

  PART II

  Tradition and Industrialization

  THE HISTORIC MEANING OF THE PLIGHT OF THE TRAGIC ELITE IN ASIA AND AFRICA

  So great a legion of ideological interests is choking the media of communication of the world today that I deem it advisable to define the terms in which I speak and for whom. In the heated, charged, and violently partisan atmosphere in which we live at this moment, all public utterances are dragged willy-nilly into the service of something or somebody. Even the most rigorously determined attitudes of objectivity and the most passionate avowals of good faith have come to be suspect. And especially is this true of the expressions of those of us who have been doomed to live and act in a tight web of racial and economic facts, facts viewed by many through eyes of political or religious interest, facts examined by millions with anxiety and even hysteria.