Stokely Carmichael argues to debunk the prevailing paradigm of integration, which has for its goal the absorption of blacks into the white man's society. He insists that blacks must refuse to become part of the "American pie" and must instead "fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones". He also issues a challenge to white activists, charging them to help in changing the status quo, not by "becoming a Pepsi generation that comes alive in the black community," but by "organiz(ing) around a concept of whiteness based on true brotherhood and based on stopping exploitation, economic exploitation, so that there will be a coalition base for black people to hook up with." Finally, Carmichael rejects the proposition that moral action can bring change, maintaining that to win against immoral men, one must move politically.
Telepromptor
Print transcriptThank you very much. It's a privilege and an honor to be in the white intellectual ghetto of the West. We wanted to do a couple of things before we started. The first is that, based on the fact that SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), through the articulation of its program by its chairman, has been able to win elections in Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, and by our appearance here will win an election in California, in 1968 I'm going to run for President of the United States. I just can't make it, 'cause I wasn't born in the United States. That's the only thing holding me back.
We wanted to say that this is a student conference, as it should be, held on a campus, and that we're not ever to be caught up in the intellectual masturbation of the question of Black Power. That's a function of people who are advertisers that call themselves reporters. Oh, for my members and friends of the press, my self-appointed white critics, I was reading Mr. Bernard Shaw two days ago, and I came across a very important quote which I think is most apropos for you. He says, "All criticism is a[n] autobiography." Dig yourself. Okay.
The philosophers Camus and Sartre raise the question whether or not a man can condemn himself. The black existentialist philosopher who is pragmatic, Frantz Fanon, answered the question. He said that man could not. Camus and Sartre was not. We in SNCC tend to agree with Camus and Sartre, that a man cannot condemn himself.
Stokely Carmichael: Black Power
October 1, 1966 (over 46 years ago)Stokely Carmichael argues to debunk the prevailing paradigm of integration, which has for its goal the absorption of blacks into the white man's society. He insists that blacks must refuse to become part of the "American pie" and must instead "fight to control the basic institutions which perpetuate racism by destroying them and building new ones". He also issues a challenge to white activists, charging them to help in changing the status quo, not by "becoming a Pepsi generation that comes alive in the black community," but by "organiz(ing) around a concept of whiteness based on true brotherhood and based on stopping exploitation, economic exploitation, so that there will be a coalition base for black people to hook up with." Finally, Carmichael rejects the proposition that moral action can bring change, maintaining that to win against immoral men, one must move politically.
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