Frantz Fanon, Soweto and American Black Thought

Citation preview

on the

cover:

original art of Fanon by,E. Nichors. photos depict studenr in Soweto, 1977; Anti_Bakke rally,' l97g; and bullet-riddled dormitory of Jackson State College, 'lg: O.'

demonstra.tion

A News & Letters pamphlet Published by News and Letters Cornmittees 1900 E. Jefferson

Detroit, Michigan News & Letters Rising Free Bookshop (Box

4820?

Harry McShane 31 Balbeg St.

Bb)

182 Upper St.

Glasgow,. G-51, Scotland

London, N1, England

June

1978

dfl..'*=.&'"@

Frq ntz Fonon,

Soweto

ond Americon Block Thought by LOU TURNER and JOHN ALAN

And gou mg lriends rng alltes

costly chaired tn London or termiting in a thousand tousns or treadmilling the ari.d round of protest, picket, pamphlet-

for as long as feruour lasts: what shall I sag of us? from "For Chief" by Dennis Brutus. 3

Contents lnlroduction

Part l-Soweto, Black Consciousness and Steve Biko Part ll-Black Struggles in the United States

page

5

page

9

page l9

Part lll-Frantz Fanon, World Revoluiionary

page 28

Part lV-American Btack Thought

4

page 4l

lntrod uction by I

I

CHARLES DEN BY Editor, News €r Letters ond RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA Choirwomon, News ond Letters Committees On this, the 1fth anniversary of the 1g68 Kerner Commission's admission that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one whiteseparate and unequal," it is clear that nothing has been done to change the

situation that the 1967 uprisings throughout the breadth and length of the land had forced the President's Commission to acknowledge. Today's papers are filled with statistics proving that conditions of life and labor among Blacks have not only not improved . . . they have worsened. Whether you take the 20*page report of the Urban League, the t[ree-day spread of the New York Ti.mes, or the single column into which the Chi.cago Tribune, Detroi.t Free Press and others have squeezed a whole decade's neglect, the following facts glare out:

o Unemployment is twice what it was 10 years ago. a Poverty has worsened and so has the death rate, 'o And while the Black middle class has grown, so has pauperization poor-and not just for those on welfare, Many can't even reach that level of poverty. There are families who, literallg, haue not been on a job for three generati,ons!

among the

The New York blackout illuminated the fraud

in the long-known

statistic that the "average" unemployment among Blacks is twice that of whites, Even the statistic that unemployment among Black youth is fully 30 percent does not tell the whole story. The naked truth is that there are Black ghettos, where unemployment among Black youth is 80 percentl What the proliferation of statistics failed to show, however, is that the dissatisfaction with the Government and the Blacks' erstwhile leaders headed by that mouthpiece of U.S. imperialism, the Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young masses does not mean that the Black

are just despairing. Contrary to- the reports in the white press, Black America's actual rejection ot white capitalistic-imperialistic exploitation, with or without Black lackeys, is, ot one and the same ti,rne, a time-bomb th.