Prometheus 6

"When a people are mired in oppression, they realize deliverance only when they have accumulated the power to enforce change...

"The nettlesome task of Negroes today is to discover how to organize our strength into compelling power so that the government cannot elude our demands. We must develop, from strength, a situation in which the government finds it wise and prudent to collaborate with us. It would be the height of naivete to wait passively until the administration had somehow been infused wth such blessings of good will that it implored us for our programs.

"We must frankly acknowledge that in past years our creativity and imagination were not employed in learning how to develop power. We found a method in nonviolent protest that worked, and we employed it enthusiastically. We did not have leisure to probe for a deeper understanding of its laws and lines of development. Although our actions were bold and crowned with successes, they were substantially improvised and spontaneous. They attained the goals set for them but carried the blemishes of inexperience."

So begins "Black Power Defined" by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This essay, published in the New York Times Magazine roughly three years after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that so many folks felt was the beginning of the final victory...gain...was Dr. King's take on what was needed next. He recognized that the successes we had at the time were significant, yet fragile, so he analyzed the nature of power in America. His conclusions came up front in the article:

"In our society power sources can always finally be traced to ideological, economic and political forces."

I'm tempted to say that no one Black bought the Times that Sunday. Still, something struck me on reading this admittedly brilliant essay. I loaded it into a word processor and ran the word counter on the article in segments and found in a 4518 word essay:

216 words on ideology
1165 words on economics
2885 words on politics

Of course in a way, one could say that he presented 4518 words on ideology. But the volume of his words on each topic reflects the focus Black people have placed on each topic. We are the first people that focused on politics as a means of gaining entry into the mainstream of America. And frankly, the fact that 35 years of gains can be set aside in a single election indicates to me that it may not have been the best possible move. I am by no means suggesting we should ignore politics. Indeed, as Dr. King states:

"Jews progressed because they possessed a tradition of education combined with social and political action. The Jewish family enthroned education and sacrificed to get it. The result was far more than abstract learning. Uniting social action with educational competence, Jews became enormously effective in political life. Those Jews who became lawyers, businessmen, writers, entertainers, union leaders and medical men did not vanish into the pursuits of their trade exclusively. They lived an active life in political circles, learning the techniques and arts of politics.

"Without overlooking the towering differences between the Negro and Jewish experiences, the lesson of Jewish mass involvement in social and political action and education is worthy of emulation."

If politics wasn't a significant source of power, the old dixiecrats wouldn't have fought so hard and creatively to keep Blacks from voting. But the fact is that we pursued a political solution almost to the exclusion of other methods...and our pursuit showed the same "blemishes of inexperience" the nonviolent protest movement showed.

Beyond inexperience, though, there are other problems, rooted in the relations we have in the Black community (with ourselves and the mainstream) that caused our political efforts to be less effective than they could have been, even with our inexperience.

The first source of power Dr. King named was ideology. He says:

In the area of ideology, despite the impact of a few Negro writers on a limited number of white intellectuals, all too few Negro thinkers have exerted an influence on the main currents of American thought. Nevertheless, Negroes have illuminated imperfections in the democratic structure that were formerly only dimly perceived, and have forced a concerned reexamination of the true meaning of American democracy. As a consequence of the vigorous Negro protest, the whole nation has for a decade probed more searchingly the essential nature of democracy, both economic and political. By taking to the streets and there giving practical lessons in democracy and its defaults, Negroes have decisively influenced white thought.

Lacking sufficient access to television, publications and broad forums, Negroes have had to write their most persuasive essays with the blunt pen of marching ranks. The many white political leaders and well-meaning friends who ask Negro leadership to leave the streets may not realize that they are asking us effectively to silence ourselves. More white people learned more about the shame of America, and finally faced some aspects of it, during the years of nonviolent protest than during the century before. Nonviolent direct action will continue to be a significant source of power until it is made irrelevant by the presence of justice.

That's it. I am fascinated by the idea of a discussion of ideology, however brief, that doesn't present the ideology under discussion.

Maybe we've been too busy, but I haven't seen any ideology in the community's efforts recently. I've seen goals. Goals are enough to move you, but sooner or later you either attain them or realize they're out of reach by any controllable means (well, some folks do neither and therefore chase a dream for their whole lives...that will keep you moving until you burn out). So you need an ideology, a motivating set of beliefs, a rational and justifiable pattern of behavior...there's any number of things you can call it, but you know what it is, and you need one that makes you strong.

WHY do you need one?

An ideology motivates beyond any specific goal because it's expressed in a pattern of action rather than as possession of a thing or condition. As an individual, an ideology tells you what is attainable because it defines what you're willing to do in order to attain it. When your choices are viewed through the eyes of ideology you know what to do next, as well as how to judge the results. Collectively, humans that are a part of a group feel strengthened by the group...a fact that represents both a great asset and a great liability. How great an asset or liability it is depends on what defines the group.

Now the fact is, you've got an ideology already. You may never have said it out loud. You may not be able to say it out loud at the moment. It's even possible to say out loud what you truly think your ideology is and be wrong. But you have one, and whatever it is, it's what's brought you to the condition you're in, whatever that condition is.

Give it some thought. Last time you tried something new, how did you judge the result? I'm not talking about the actual judgement (success/failure or whatever), I'm asking what are the standards you compare things to in judging them. A couple of popular standards of judgement are:

• Did it feel good (enough)?
• Did it serve God?
• Did it make money?
• Did it lose money?
• Did it make sense?

Spend a day or so paying particular attention to the decisions you make. It's a useful exercise to see what your ideology looks like from the outside. It's useful to be conscious of the patterns in your own behavior.

Back to Dr. King

Dr. King implies Black people haven't exerted much influence on the main currents of American thought, outside of making them aware of discrimination as a social force. It seems to me a major stumbling block that the only social force particular to Black culture that has mainstream recognition is discrimination. It strikes me that the mainstream feels Black people are like white people who have been discriminated against. I can see some benefit in such a characterization, but the fact is that because of discrimination Black people have had some unique, shaping experiences (culturally and individually) that make the characterization not quite true at the moment.

Given that all cultural experiences are true to the person that experiences them, the world must be such that all cultural experiences are believable, and all are both partially true and only part of the truth. As the economies of the world become a world economy, this will be brought home with greater and greater force. This need to understand multiple cultures is new to most cultures, but not to Black Americans. White Americans have had the luxury of thinking of Black folks as a point to be considered while Black folks have had to explore the whole space of possible caucasian reactions...from guilt-ridden, jelly-donut sweet Liberals to hostile, terminally constipated Conservatives, from activist to all-talk. As Euroculture becomes the model for economic activity and other nations are engulfed by European ways, they will understand a Black American ideology more than Mainstream America would. I believe we can have more of an impact on the currents of world thought than we have had on American thought.

Which still says nothing about what that ideology is or should be. That's because I can't say. I can say what it should be about, though. It should be about people, humans, how they become what they are under the varying circumstances we all experience.