Civil Rights vs. Revolutionary Rebellion
“Within systems of genocide and oppression, those who resist always have a higher survivability rate than those who submit.”
When Africans were in a state of open rebellion against colonization, Jim Crow segregation, and openly racist institutional structures; we had lower rates of violence, homicides, and incarceration with in our communities.
We were told by the US government that; if we abandoned our Revolutionary aspirations, rejected militant organizations, embraced integration/assimilation, and allowed the legal and political process to work on our behave, we’d have less violence, less incarceration, less poverty, and more prosperity…..none of it was true.
Black people didn’t gain a damn thing from this political system through non-violence, marching, praying, or appealing to the morality of White people; the government only made concessions when we began to disrupt the economy of the state though longstanding boycotts, urban riots which brought America’s industrial centers to a standstill, by linking with international guerrilla moments that also fought against capitalist imperialism, and by carrying out planned and controlled acts of sabotage and violence directed towards elite and government institutions.
The very moment we abandoned the African World Revolution, for the Civil Rights Movement, was the very moment we became a non-factor in US politics and within the US economy. That is when the US government began its policy of divestment in the inner-cities, the replacement of suppressed Black labor with suppressed immigrant labor (in agriculture & unskilled/semi-skilled jobs),the mass influx of drugs and weapons into Black communities, and the mass criminalization and incarceration of Black youth.
The myth that we gained freedom (which we never did), through non-violence has retarded our progress over the last half century. We, as a people need a radical change in strategy and tactics. We need to review the history of our more recent struggle, and develop a more functional and honest critique. We need to accept that it was a fatal mistake to trade Revolution for Rights; and correct that error.
(Note: It is not my intent to demean or ignore the bravery and sacrifices of our ancestors who fought for integration. However, we don’t any our ancestors by ignoring or repeating their mistakes. We have the same goals as our ancestors, even if we employ different methods.)
