Word: nationalist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...political level, nationalism is a reaction to King's non-violent tactics and all the "go-slow" methods of an older generation. Perhaps the key phrases are black autonomy and black pride, in addition to black power. The nationalist is a man who feels that it is time for the Negro to stop wondering if he's going to accept the white. He is a man reacting to what Richard Wright called a "frog perspective," a tendency to define oneself by white man's standards: "If you ask an American Negro to describe his situation, he will almost always tell...
This is why integration is a word rarely heard among the younger leaders--they are tired of hearing that they must improve themselves so they can "step up" into the white society. This is why the poverty program, aimed at the "culturally deprived," is regarded by the nationalists as just another tool of the white man. In a conversation over why I, the White Student Liberal, was tutoring in Watts, a nationalist said, "Your job is not to tell those kids that they're as good as you are, but to prove that you're as good as they...
Karenga is a "purist" nationalist and preaches a sort of up-dated, watered-down Garveyism--he is not so much interested in going back to Africa as in creating Little Africa rgiht in Los Angeles. He wants to incorporate Watts,. for instance, and call it Freedom City, with its own police force, transportation and school systems. "I am obsessed with the idea of freedom, of self-determination," Karenga said at a rally during the Watts Festival, "and I'd rather use a pump in Freedom City that we controlled than to turn on a faucet in a city where...
Unfortunately, this last, most simplistic, interpretation of black power seems also to be the one projected most outside the community. When groups of teenagers wearing "Black Power" sweatshirts assaulted white youths at the Teen Post Junior Olympics, for instance, headlines in the L.A. Times read, "'Black Nationalist' Plot Blamed for Teen Post Melee." The Youths undoubtedly had no idea of what nationalism is all about, but this is the way "black power" has filtered down to them, and to the white press...
Nationalism has caught on in Watts not because it is a new and exciting idea, but because it is an approach to the race problem which is grounded in the reality of being a ghetto Negro. It is not that nationalists or quasi-nationalists are trying to persuade or propagandize--it is more a matter of articulating feelings which are already there. As one nationalist put it, "If you grew up in the ghetto and think, you're automatically a nationalist...