(00:00:00) Perhaps the most critical problem that I run into on campuses. is what I call historical Amnesia that is a people lived through a body of history and a body of struggle and then people some up through the development of new organizations or political formations or whatever social institutions cultural institutions that are based upon the Praxis the theory and the action based upon a body of history people have lived through and then after a period of time people forget what we have all collectively lived and this is a critical problem for black people who are under the age of 21 because they the vast majority of people in this room Black or White cannot remember personally a time when Jim Crow existed as individuals now my family is from Macon County, Alabama. And when I was a small boy and I gone into a store and tried on a pair of pants. I would have been beaten within an inch of my life. Had I been a teenager and gone into a restroom. I would have been shot and that happened in Macon County 1967. I remember quite seriously the personal threat of violence that would occur to me all based upon the reality of racism and you don't have that personal recollection, you know about it historically in an abstract sense, but not personally in a profound way. The other problem is since it occurred prior to your existence if history is not concrete sized in your practice, if you have not Incorporated that history in the way you think and the way you act today. Then indeed that history might never have have occurred at all. And I want to begin my discussion on three points on racism on the crisis of American economics today in the 80s and all the crisis of democracy by giving you a very short promised 30 second story. This occurred to me at Brown University all in January of this year. I went to Brown University to speak at the end of January just before their traditional black history month and a group of black students met me at the airport and they were really depressed. Nice. They said oh man, it's I'm glad to see you. We feel terrible and I said well, hey whatwhat's the deal and they said well we had last week a Martin Luther King Day celebration at the local high school and we put a big poster of dr. King on the wall in the gymnasium and the black high school students between the ages of 15 to 18 came into the auditorium. They said hey, is this the dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration and the college students from Brown said, yes, it is. So black high school students. That is that dr. King and the black college student said, yes it is. And then the most Brave and the most articulate of the high school students that forward and said is he coming? That's right. Is he coming? So what could the sister say? Except? I hope not right? Heidegger makes this point. That a people who lack of History are like a tree without roots. A tree can be very sturdy and strong and spread its arms out in the sky, but it's dead if it has no roots the same thing is true for people who do not have a history. This is what I mean by historical amnesia. So we must approach the Contemporary problems that we see today in the light of History. How do we understand the present? The history that we create today in the light of the past. If we approach today in light of the past what strikes me as a political theorist and political historian is that the national black community is faced with the greatest challenge of the century and that challenge is its continued survival. Now all of us here in this Auditorium recognize that the increased level of repression, which has combined the forces of reaganism and racism and economic reaction have aimed specifically against black women men and children in virtually every town and City and rural areas across the United States and that these forces have been escalating in the last five years. The level of permanent unemployment, especially among black blue collar and service workers is particularly devastating black youth unemployment in some cities and Bedford stay and in Harlem. This summer was an excess of 80% in excess of 80% One of the critical ways in which this crisis manifest itself of course is in the Reagan administration's military budget, perhaps more than any single factor, which has been responsible for the acceleration of black misery and exploitation in the 80s over 40 billion dollars was cut from this year's Social Services budget. And another 75 billion dollars is planned for fiscal lady for Reagan's war against food stamps public housing job training programs affirmative action and social security has shattered the lives of millions of black Hispanic and poor and working-class white American people. Over the next five years the president Administration plans to spend in excess of 1.5 trillion dollars for defense spending now for we Mortals it's awfully difficult to think about 1.5 trillion dollars when someone asks you hey, you got one point five trillion dollars on you, buddy. This is what you answer when you want to think about 1.5 trillion in human terms. If you spent a million dollars a day from the birth of Christ to today you would spend less than one-half of what Reagan wants to spend for defense for the next five years. within the black community itself There is great concern and discussion about what the defense spending will mean in terms of health care and Welfare and social services, but Reaganomics in and of itself does not provide all the answers for the reasons why the black community is experiencing its present crisis. It is no accident. I believe that the emergence of reaganism has occurred precisely at the historic juncture where lynchings police brutality and other forms of random racist violence have reached epidemic proportions in the black community. It is no accident that the recent explosion of Ku Klux Klan violence from Greensboro North Carolina in 1979 across the black belt of Mississippi and indeed into Washington DC itself has occurred when legal and extralegal attacks against black elected officials civil rights workers and black nationalist organizations have also accelerated. What is the character of the attack and how can we relate it to the objective crisis of the American economic system? First we must understand the character of the attack itself. First what we are seeing in the United States in the last three or four years particularly is a steady proliferation of racist motivated random acts of violence in 1981 alone. There were 12 at least 12 murders in Mississippi, which were suspected by blacks of being racially motivated on January the 11th last year. For example, the body of 45 year-old Lord Douglas gray was found hanging from a tree and Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Aw, hollett, the Tallahatchie coroner pronounced Gray's death suicide and no autopsy was formed on Jack on February the 28th of last year the badly mangled body of 32 year old boy Washington was discovered in Cypress Creek in Holmes County, Mississippi on October the 12th. The body of Douglas McDonald's pulled from a lake in East over Mississippi. The black man's ears were removed and his genitals were also hacked off. All these incidents are racist violence. We're not confined to the Deep South and 1980s most of us in the room know unless we're suffering from historical Amnesia what occurred in Buffalo during September and October of 1980 where a series of black men were executed brutally on the streets of Buffalo New York, two of the black men 71 year old parlor W Edwards 40 year old shorty Ernest Jones were savagely beaten to death and Incredibly had their hearts removed from their bodies. In Arizona 300 black Evangelical Christians purchased the farm to develop a religious retreat. We're also the victims of a series of racist attacks local whites. For example, destroy the requisite recreation center and the swimming pool black members were shot at almost run down by automobiles. Then finally this October a bomb was planted in the church van which exploded killing one person and injuring eight others. We've also seen a steady rise of Ku Klux Klan violence since 1971. The clan has nearly tripled its National membership. Since the late 1970s the Klan is also stepped up its racist attacks against the black community. We're also seeing an acceleration of police violence against blacks increasingly state and local law enforcement officials are applying excessive force in dealing with black suspects in 1980 whites in New Orleans, for example shot at least 10 blacks under what are officially described as suspicious circumstances a white police officer in Summerville, South Carolina Last Summer Rae three black women held in Dorchester County jail and was acquitted of all wrongdoing in a subsequent trial in Los Angeles a series of police Chokehold murders have occurred with the greatest number of victims being black men and Hispanic men when the press this may finally asked LA police chief Daryl Gates why so many black men seem to be dying at the hands of his officers. He calmly responded that Somehow it seems that when we apply the choke holds two whites. They don't seem to die as often as blacks do and perhaps black seem to die more than normal people. At a subsequent press conference the black person spurious as you can well imagine they said well, what do you mean by this remark? He said well, you know, they're black people and then they're normal people right? No problem. Well, how did he die? She said they said well, he launched himself in his jail cell and she thought him and she said now wait a minute. I just saw him three to three hours ago. He was in fine spirits and then it occurred to her. He wasn't even wearing a belt. How could he kill himself and their response was Well, ma'am. He strangled himself with his socks. I'm quoting. He strangled himself with his socks. Last December I received a call when I taught at Cornell just been at Fisk for six months when I was teaching at Cornell. I received a call from a local police officer in Social Circle Georgia, and I received word that my wife's cousin 19 year old black man had disappeared the word within the community was that he was killed by the Klan or by white racist for going out with a white girl three months later his body. The spring was found. He was 14 feet up in a tree outside of Social Circle when the corner went out to investigate the corpse. He said it was a suicide We organized the SCLC and other activists around the March two weeks later the Klan had twice as many people as we did and they went through and trashed my mother-in-law's house in the black community. If you read from the Grassroots, you'll learn that my brother-in-law my wife's brother. Michael etchison was the first black police officer in Monroe, Georgia, and he was assassinated barely five and a half years ago by white racists. If this is happening in my family, how many of the black people's have families is this occurring And then finally, we're seeing an increased brutality as I mentioned in the criminal justice system. One more point on this this past year in 1982. There were more than two point four million afro-americans who are arrested in this country. Let me repeat that in every year in this country between eight to eight and a half percent of the Afro American population is arrested in the United States roughly 30% of all people arrested in this country are black every year roughly 50% of those convicted are black. What does that tell you about the criminal justice systems system, one of the things that we're seeing occurring is increased brutality in the forms of death. And then by this I just I do not only mean the return and the escalation of the death penalty. I'm referring to forms of unique brutality and literally barbarism that have not been seen since the Middle Ages case in point in May 1982 the state senate of Georgia ratified by a vote of 28 222. Something called the death car. Have you heard about this the death car? It's exactly what it says. It's an electric chair on Wheels and what they intend to do in the state of Georgia if it passes the lower house as it probably will is to put an electric chair in a truck put the convicted person in the car drive them to the scene of their alleged crime and then throw the switch. This is called a death car. What kind of people even conceive of a death car more importantly what kind of people vote for it? Now simple recognition of the explosion of racist random violence institutional violence and vigilante violence is no substitute for an analysis of the crisis before black people. The current outbreak of racist attacks is a manifestation of a profound and fundamental crisis within the political economy of Monopoly capitalism in America, simultaneously, it represents the logical culmination and popular expression of cultural and social patterns of racism that increasingly pits the petty bourgeoisie or the middle class has the working classes and the permanently unemployed of a variety of ethnic groups against each other over increasingly scarce resources. In economic terms the 1980s in the last three years have been characterized by a profound crisis of capital accumulation and a steady erosion of the shtetl standard of living of the white middle classes and Broad sectors of the American population. The number of small business failures to cite only one example during the first month during the first week of October 1982. There were over 600 small businesses dry cleaners Lumber Mills restaurants retail stores that closed permanently between September 82 September 81. This is prior to the downturn of this year commercial and Industrial failures, exceeded 12,600 a 250 percent increase over the bankruptcy rate of 1978. In 1950 us manufacturing output totaled 62 percent of the combined output for the 10 major capitalist Nations by 1965. The 62% had dropped to 50 percent by 1976 had dropped to 43 percent and by 1982. It was below 40% There have been a series of bankruptcies that we've seen throughout the country both both corporate and personal. The number of mortgage foreclosures initiated on homes Finance. For example by the federal housing Administration reach 2,000 every month in 1981 and over 3,000 each month on average in 1982. Now the economic crisis which has been described in the media as a recession for White America has been a depression for black people. Black official unemployment in this country is 20.2 percent as of last month, but what that translates in in human terms when you include discouraged workers is above 30% discourage workers as a footnote here the US Labor Statistics people when they go up to people and say, excuse me, Joe dokes. Are you unemployed? And Joe doakes says or Mary Jo says, yeah. I'm unemployed. I don't have a job and they said now wait a minute. Have you looked for a job in the last four weeks? It's a job what job there's no jobs out here was you're not unemployed You're simply discouraged. So they check off discouraged workers true discouraged workers. They don't count discouraged workers. Did you know last year according to the US government one out of three black workers within the labor force was unemployed sometime during the year. This is prior to the downturn of 82. Now a lot of people say that the black middle class is now the majority and yet some of you may remember this Time Magazine did a special feature on the New Black middle class and it said the majority of black people are now in the middle class. I said, hey, yo, I got to meet these people. I don't see them within the black community, right? You know, I call them a black Elite. There's a you know, dr. Dubois used to talk about The Talented tenth that's roughly what it is, but the vast majority of black people have not seen hide nor hair of a middle class. Let me give you just some statistics from the recent 1980 census very briefly if you had to guess The number of black people in the United States who earn fifty thousand dollars a year or more given the fact that the black population is roughly 28 to 30 million people. What would you guess? A lot of people may be surprised to learn that in the United States today. They're only 12,000 black males and mm black females who earn $50,000 to $75,000 a year of income. That's it. Four figures above $75,000 there were six hundred and forty three thousand white males who are in that figure in the country. There were if I remembered my senses correct figures correctly. I can look down here to that would help there were 4,000 black males. There were 300 black females 300 black females who were in that salary. That's it. The black middle class as a dominant hegemonic class or strata as it were is dominant in the sense that it exerts ideological hegemony over the dominant black working in poor strata of the society simply because it is a client or buffer Elite but not due to its numbers. We do not see it in the census data and it does not exist in the black community. Now how does all this relate objectively to racism we understand the economic crisis the rise of reaganism in electoral politics and the proliferation of racist reaction. Is congealing in a question and the question that is open for the new right is the utilitarian the the utility rather of democracy beyond the 1980s? Now, how can we see this about three years ago? There was an essay written by my favorite reactionary. Follow me Irving kristol. You should check him out Irving crystals very articulate. He's very smooth and he is very very reactionary. But you can learn more things from articulate enemies than you can from an army of well-meaning fools. What is Irving? Kristol say in an essay that he wrote in October 1979 called put the working class through the ringer. This is what he argued. He said that Ronald Reagan will probably run the White House next year. However, Ronald Reagan is and reaganism and he didn't use the phrase Reaganomics that had to wait until 80, but Ronald Reagan's economic program must involved just incredible measures of repression how incredible Crystal suggested that in order to turn the capitalist economy around to accelerate Capital formation for Riley of Corporations there had to be a cut in real wages of 25% over the next five years. This is beyond inflation the 25% cut in real wages, but that would not be enough there had to be a balancing the federal budget, but that would not be enough Crystal suggest. The only way that we can save the system is quote to put American working people through the ringer. There is only one country. He noted where this Economic Policy appears to be working that is chilly where the nation has been indeed put through the ringer these past couple of years and where the economic Outlook is steadily improving and quite bright. Commenting lightly upon chili chili is bloody. Military Junta Crystal observed quote. It would be ironic if it turned out that free market economics could only be achieved at the expense of a free Society. There is a fundamental contradiction here. The contradiction is that in a crisis period of capital accumulation. That if you fall back to the logic that undergirds people like Milton Friedman and Thomas soul and other new right economic theorists and the kinds of economic dogmas that Ronald Reagan is victim of and indeed has produced Ronald Reagan these people argue that the Invisible Hand should be working in the economy to make things better and the government should not be involved in or the state should not make economic decisions. The private market economy should have as little State involvement as possible. There is a problem in a participation of participatory democracy even within the context of a Bourgeois democracy and the problem is very simply this people can vote. People can vote if people decide through legislation to restrict plant closings. Let's say we vote at a local level in the state of Iowa that if plants want to close they have to have a two-year moratorium period before they're allowed to close and if a plant moves from the state of Iowa that it has to pay the same state taxes and local taxes for another five years after it leaves there are states and cities that are moving this direction, you know. Now what this does is place the economic system with the political system at odds, because the people through the expression of participation within the electoral process can make macro economic decisions that have a tremendous impact on capital accumulation. And that is the contradiction that is the contradiction because the logic of the trilateral commission and the logic of the new right is simply this in a nutshell if it comes between democracy even bushwa democracy and capitalism, they're going to go for capitalism and they're going to Chuck democracy. Now this is not to predict the pattern of American Social history because there are a variety of options that we can see the most common option that a number of social theorists are putting forward is something that is called friendly fascism to take a page from Bertram gross friendly fascism. Yes, then you should read this book is fantastic Bertram gross who wrote humphrey-hawkins and who wrote the 1946 Full Employment Act is predicting that the United States is going to gut the core of democracy, but leave the facade as it is, it won't look anything like Nazi Germany and it wouldn't look anything like Mussolini's Italy fascist Italy. It wouldn't look like tojo's Japan. You would have a supreme court you would have a chief executive you'd have an executive branch of government. You would have up sensibly civil liberties. You would even have blacks up in the cabinet, but it would be racist and it would be ruthless. And would ensure the rights of capital and the hegemony over the working class for all practical purposes. It would be a unique American form of authoritarianism with a friendly facade friendly fascism that is not to predict the course of history, but it is to say that in every society we were that has moved toward a form of State authoritarianism no matter what kind of phrase you want to call it. There has been a preparatory period of several years or at least a decade we're racist violence were ethnic antagonisms and we're attacks against working people and corporate struggles with labor have been in a clear form take a look at she'll a prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende and how that was engineered and the variety of fascist organizations that have a similar ideology with the American Nazi party. And have a similar ideology with the logic of the new right have emerged again. It's imperative to see the parallels here. And that the option for corporations is to attempt to accumulate profits. The logic of capitalism is capital accumulation. It is not to maintain democracy. It is only a convenient form of political rule. To conclude. What does this mean for black people? Very three very short points first part of our problem in the black movement Beyond understanding the patterns of History has been an absence of clarity about the goals of the movement. Now I teach at Fisk University and several leaders in the NAACP and Urban League came down to a forum only a month ago. It was right. In fact, it was right after the midterm elections and a number of people asked one young woman in the audience asked the participants will tell me I'm confused. I was too young to be a part of black power movement. I'm too young to be a part of the Civil Rights Movement. People talk about equality in the struggle for civil rights and decent things for black people. But what are the goals of the movement what eventually do we want to achieve as black people other than myself not a single person on the panel could answer the question. That tells you something about the poverty of theory within the black movement. When people don't know what they want in society, they don't deserve to run the society. The true task of any revolutionary is not to say what is wrong with the society. It is to say what could we do if we had the power? And it is to prepare yourself, you know all do seriousness to transform the society to improve the lot of the vast majority of oppressed people. It is not good enough to rhetorically stand on a soapbox and posture. What we have to do is to develop a theory of social transformation that is appropriate to the American terrain speaking a language that makes concrete common-sense to the vast majority of black people Hispanic people and oppressed working and poor people in the society. Part of this language must be a redefinition of terms two terms. I want to throw out at you. The first term is the term of a quality. in the 1960s for many black people equality was translated as parity or equal access or equal opportunity within the existing framework economic political social educational and cultural relations within the United States as it was now many people said we don't want to upset the apple cart. We just want a piece of the pie. That's all we want. We have been denied our slice of the pie. The problem was not getting a piece of the pie even though it's very difficult to get an expanding piece of a pie when the pie itself is shrinking rather. It is changing the character of the kitchen itself. And determining who cooks the pie and who controls how things are cooked. It is not rather getting a position or as we used to call the black face and a high place within an inherently unequal structure. It is rather turning that structure around to be equal in a fundamental way in the way. I Define a quality is the way John Rawls The Fonz it is a condition of human fairness and justice for the vast majority of the people who live within the polity Quality can no longer mean an equal opportunity because equal opportunity with an inherently unequal system is not a quality at all. And the last point is a question of freedom in American society. One of the things that the black movement. In fact All American people we constantly turn on the television and we hear or radio and we hear that Americans have a free Society. In fact, it called capitalism not even his own name. They call it free enterprise. Who is it free for Corporations are free to move from one part of the country to another or to Taiwan or the Singapore to Hong Kong, but who creates the wealth within the society? Where does the wealth come from within the society? Why is it that there is such high unemployment in the society when corporations and banks are free to invest wherever they choose. Freedom in this Society has all often meant all too often meant freedom of Corporations to raise prices the freedom of a plant shutdown and the freedom of black people and brown people and women and poor people to dwell at the precipice of poverty and Desperation. I think that this Freedom as we Define it in this country must be to read it really turned around the freedom for black people must connote the assertion of a job as an absolute human, right the freedom of a cup of a community to control Factory closings and relocations the freedom from the fear created by poor medical facilities in inner cities and rural areas. The freedom that is created through the right to free public education from preschool levels through the University's the freedom that is created for the poor and the desperate for having the right to free public housing such a definition of social freedom is virtually alien to the norms and traditions of America's capitalist and racist state. But there cannot be peaceful race relations and there will not be an end to racist violence against black people until there is social justice and a redefinition of Freedom itself because without Justice there can be no. Peace. I began my lecture talking about the attempt for the oppressed to remember their history the history that we went through in the 1960s was called by historians the second reconstruction. In the not too distant future. There will be a third reconstruction. Its vision for us is quite clear. It's vision is based on our history. It's vision is based on an analysis of the objective conditions conditions, which Faith are people in the society. So the vision is clear. The only question for us is the power. Thank you.