King on Black Power – Part 1
Thomas Allen
In “Black Power,” Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), pages 23–70, Martin Luther King, Jr., discusses the rise of Black Power, its flaws, and his objections to it. The following is a critical review of King’s essay.
(First, I must remind the reader that most conservatives and nearly all conservative commentators consider King a conservative. Furthermore, many conservative commentators assert that King is an archconservative and the greatest conservative ever. Some have even deified him. Hereafter, all these conservatives are referred to as King-idolizing conservatives. Since King is an archconservative, these King-idolizing conservatives should advocate everything that King advocated.)
King begins his essay by discussing the shooting of James Meredith, which occurred in June 1966 and some events that followed. Meredith’s wounds prevented him from continuing his march in Mississippi. So, King, who represented the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Stokely Carmichael, who represented the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and Floyd McKissich, who represented the Congress for Racial Equality (CORE), continued Meredith’s march. (For more about, Carmichael, McKissich, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE, see “The Civil Rights Movement Is a Communist Movement” by Thomas Allen.)
Then, King describes the events leading to the resumption of the Meredith Mississippi Freedom March. He discovered that many young Negroes in the troop had become more openly militant. Unfulfilled promises had caused this militant anti-White attitude. Although King wanted to continue his “nonviolent” way, members of CORE and SNCC want to be more militant.
King opposed being openly violent because they “had neither the resources nor the techniques to win.” (P. 27.) To trick and provoke Whites into attacking “peaceful,” unarmed protestors was King’s tactic.
Carmichael of SNCC opposed Whites joining the march. King’s speculated that Carmichael’s opposition came from his experience in 1964 in Mississippi when Northerners flooded into Mississippi to work with and instruct Negroes, and the parental attitude of these Northerners made Negroes feel even more inadequate. (Many Northerners, especially Yankees, still believe that Negroes are incapable of taking care of themselves and of advancing without the succor of Whites.) However, King wanted the march to be interracial, and he persuaded Carmichael and McKissich to agree with his (King’s) conditions for the march: nonviolent and interracial. (Unlike Carmichael and McKissich, King appeared to have no qualms about genociding the American Negro via breeding them out of existence with interracial mating, which is a natural result of racial integration.)
During that march, “the birth of the Black Power slogan [entered] in the civil rights movement” (pp. 29-30) although the phrase had been used earlier. However, King “had the deep feeling that it was an unfortunate choice of words for a slogan.” (P. 30.)
A schism began to occur between the Black Power folks led by Carmichael and the Freedom Now faction led by King. King argued, “The words ‘black’ and ‘power’ together give the impression that we are talking about black domination rather than black equality.” (P. 32.) (Eventually, the Negro not only achieved equality, but the White oligarchs gave the Negro domination over all Whites but themselves. Now, Negroes have far more privileges than Whites ever had at the pinnacle of White supremacy or Jim Crow. Moreover, White oligarchs have enslaved common Whites to support a vast number of Negroes through the welfare state, affirmative action, quotas, etc.) In the end, the Black Power folks and the Freedom Now folks segregated and separated from each other. (So much for these hypocrites adhering to integration.)
Next, King explains that “it is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. . . . It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment.” (P. 33.) (Negroes may have been disappointed then, but now they have more than most ever dreamed of having as Whites cower before them.)
King writes, “For centuries the Negro has been caught in the tentacles of white power. Many Negroes have given up faith in the white majority because ‘white power’ with total control has left them empty-handed. So in reality the call for Black Power is a reaction to the failure of white power.” (P. 32). (Now, Whites are caught in the tentacles of Black Power. Evidence is Whites debasing themselves before Black Lives Matter as though such debasement would ever earn them the respect or admiration of Negroes. Instead, it has earned them the Negro’s disgust and disrespect. Not only did this debasement earn the disgust and disrespect of all self-respecting Negroes, but it also earned the disgust and disrespect of all self-respecting Whites.)
Continuing, King comments on the number of Negro and White civil rights workers killed in Mississippi and the number of churches bombed or burned. He notes, “This is white power in its most brutal, cold-blooded and vicious form.” (P. 34.) (With numerous riots since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and their vast destruction of property and many resulting deaths, Black Power has far exceeded White power in its most brutal, cold-blooded, and vicious form. When the brutal viciousness that Negro criminals perpetrate against Whites is included, Black Power makes King’s description of White power look benevolent.)
Much of the blame for the rise of Black Power, King places on the federal government. The federal government failed to become despotic enough quick enough to ram all the demands of the Negroes “down the throats” of Whites — especially Southerners. (Within a decade, the federal government had become despotic enough to force Whites to surrender unconditionally to the demands of the Negro. Over the decades, this despotism has grown until now White oligarchs are giving Negroes privileges and benefits that they never dreamed possible or even thought about.)
Not only does King condemn the South, but he also condemns the North. “In the Northern ghettos, unemployment, housing discrimination and slum schools mock the Negro who tries to hope. . . . The gap between the wages of the Negro worker and those of the white worker has widened. Slums are worse and Negroes attend more thoroughly segregated schools today than in 1954.” (Pp. 35-36.) (For most Northerners, civil rights and special privileges and benefits for Negroes were only supposed to apply in the South. They were not supposed to apply in the North. If Northerners had known that they were going to be suffocated and devoured in the tentacles of the civil rights movement that they wished on the South, the civil rights movement would have died before it began.)
According to King, the Vietnam War was a major cause of the rise of Black Power and Negroes becoming more violent. Also, Negroes had become disappointed “with timid white moderates who feel that they can set the timetable for the Negro’s freedom.” (P. 36.) They had become disappointed “with a federal administration that seems to be more concerned about winning an ill-considered war in Vietnam than about winning the war against poverty here at home.” (P. 36.) Thus, King wanted resources wasted on the Vietnam War to be allocated to the War on Poverty. (Consequently, King-idolizing conservatives should be ardent supporters of the welfare state and should demand that resources spent on foreign wars promoting American hegemony be spent on the War on Poverty.)
Moreover, King condemns both Whites and Negro clergymen who fail to support the civil rights movement with sufficient alacrity. Their apathy was a cause of the rise of Black Power. The Negro middle class also suffered his wrath.
About Black Power, King writes that “in its broad and positive meaning, [Black Power] is a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals.”(P. 37) (White oligarchs would give the Negro enough political and economic power to achieve their goals, legitimate or otherwise.) King laments about the Negro’s lack of power. (Now, the Negro has power that probably exceeded what King imagined possible.)
Continuing, King writes, “The problem of transforming the ghetto is, therefore, a problem of power.” (P. 37.) (Negroes have gained control of the governments of many major cities. Not only have ghettos not vanished under Black Power, but they have often grown worse — even with the influx of enormous amounts of federal money.) King expresses a great deal of lust for power and associates power with love.
Then, King writes that “the ultimate answer to the Negroes’ economic dilemma will be found in a massive federal program for all the poor.” (P. 39) (Eventually, King’s demand for massive federal expenditures on poverty came to fruition, yet poverty remains. [Too many people are getting rich from poverty for it to be eliminated.] Moreover, since King was a fervent supporter of the welfare state and the War on Poverty, all King-idolizing conservatives should also be zealous supporters of them.)
King urged Negroes to combine their resources and to develop habits of thrift and techniques of wise investment. (Unfortunately, most Negroes ignored his advice.)
“Black Power is a psychological call to manhood. For years the Negro has been taught that he is nobody, that his color is a sign of his biological depravity, that his being has been stamped with an indelible imprint of inferiority, that his whole history has been soiled with the filth of worthlessness.” (P. 39.) (For the most part, Negroes have overcome these psychological problems. White oligarchs and Negroes teach Whites that they are worthless oppressors and are not worthy of respect and are inferior to the Negro. However, as crime statistics show, the Negro has failed to overcome his biological depravity, which is in his genes.)
Summarizing his discussion of the impact of slavery on Negroes, King writes, “Here, then, was the way to produce a perfect slave. Accustom him to rigid discipline, demand from him unconditional submission, impress upon him a sense of his innate inferiority, develop in him a paralyzing fear of white men, train him to adopt the master’s code of good behavior, and instill in him a sense of complete dependence.” (P. 40.) (In many respects, Negroes have vanquished the effects of slavery. They are not subject to discipline or submission. [Whites are expected to submit to Negroes.] They no longer fear Whites, but Whites fear them. Most Negroes have abandoned the code of good behavior. However, most Negroes still have a sense of complete dependence. They depended on the welfare state and the special privileges and benefits that the oligarchs have given them.) Then, King writes, “Black Power is a psychological reaction to the psychological indoctrination that led to the creation of the perfect slave.”
King asserts that the Negro “must no longer be ashamed of being black.” (P. 42) (Although Negroes are no longer ashamed of being black, many Whites are ashamed of being White. Further, realizing the benefits and privileges that Negroes have but are denied Whites, a growing number of Whites are claiming to be Negroes.)
Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Allen.
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