Analysis by Analogy: The Colonial Situation in Black America

Disclaimer: I'm stealing this line "analysis by analogy" from an interview with Cedric Johnson on the podcast Dead Pundits Society.  The notion that the situation for blacks in America is akin to struggles against colonialism abroad reappears often in black political thought.  This "analysis by analogy" - as Cedric Johnson terms it - was popular in black power writings from the 1960s, but its revival has emerged with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.  The importance of this debate rests with the fact that how the left analyzes our current condition has a significant impact on on future strategy and tactics.  Whether white leftists should have any say on this matter is a different debate, but the issue is worth noting.

Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton laid out their version of the colonial situation in their 1967 book Black Power: The Politics of Liberation.  Their book centers around black Americans' struggle for political representation in the 60s due to political, economic, social, and physiological effects of American colonialism.  The authors provided the service of African American during World War I as an example:

Participation of black men in the white man's wars is a characteristic of colonialism.  The colonial ruler readily calls upon and expects the subjects to fight and die in defense of the colonial empire, without the ruler feeling any particular compulsion to grant the subjects equal status.  In fact, the war is frequently to defend the socio-political status quo established between the ruler and the subject.

Carmichael and Hamilton noted that while colonies were usually exploited for natural resources, black America was exploited for cheap labor.  They argued that connecting black struggles in America to global struggles for Third World independence was a necessity for the struggles of the 1960s.

Undeniably influenced by Franz Fanon's postcolonial theory laid out in The Wretched of the Earth, they argued that American colonialism threatened to coopt black Americans into white middle class culture.  This assimilation had the effect of defusing the anger and radical sympathies of black America.  Still, while the colonial powers of Portugal and France often accepted these blacks into the ranks of their elite, the American power structure did not.  According to them, this assimilated black middle class occupied a marginal position not only outside of the American bourgeoisie, but also outside of black America.  Coopted blacks were essentially in limbo.  Nevertheless, the weakness of Carmichael and Hamilton was their subordination of the class struggle to the racial struggle in America, something that other black radicals explicitly pointed out.

Fred Hampton, a Black Panther leader assassinated in 1969, detested the Carmichael and Hamilton's anti-colonial position, while offering his own.  In a speech at Northern Illinois University one month before his murder, Hampton commented on the deficiencies of an anti-colonial critique rooted in cultural nationalism:

Changing your name is not gonna change our set of arrangements. The only thing that’s gonna change our set of arrangements is what’s gotten us into this set of arrangements. And that’s the oppressor. And it’s on three stages, we call it the three-in-one: avaricious, greedy businessmen; demagogic, lyin’ politicians; and racist, pig fascist, reactionary cops. Until you deal with those three tings, then your set of arrangements will remain the same. The only difference will be that you’re still under fascism, but instead of Fred being under fascism, I’ll be Oogabooga under fascism. But I’ll feel the same. Instead of me goin’ to the gas chamber, I’ll go to an African section of the gas chamber.

Fed Hampton was frustrated with this sort of "pork chop nationalism" that he believed was rooted in idealism rather than on-the-ground action.  For these younger revolutionaries in the Black Panther Party, they didn't have the patience to withdraw from mainstream American society, gather the forces of black America, and wait for a better day - as black nationalists such as Carmichael, Hamilton, and Amiri Baraka advocated at the time.  Baraka's ideas would later evolve towards a more Marxist approach.  In response, Hampton advocated his own vision of anti-colonial politics:

And that free health clinic was put there because we know where the problem is at. We know that black people are most oppressed. And if we didn’t know that, then why the hell would we be running around talking about the black liberation struggle has to be the vanguard for all liberation struggles? If there’s ever going to be any liberation in the mother country, ever gonna be any liberation in the colony, then we got to be liberated by the leadership of the Black Panther Party and the black liberation struggle. We don’t negate that fact.

Hampton sought what he believed was a more direct approach to liberation, one rooted in addressing black people's immediate needs through mutual aid programs.  Still, the notion that black Americans were a colonized people in need of independence remained. 

What this seems to point towards is whether armed struggle of the colonial variety is necessary in the United States of America.  One of the main criticisms of the Black Panther Party is that it did not have deep roots in the black working class.  Its target for recruitment seemed to be the urban lumpenproletariat without much bargaining power as workers.  It is easy to criticize the Black Panthers for failing to organize the black working class directly at their sites of employment - much like the Revolutionary League of Black Workers did in Detroit in 1968.  What these criticisms of the Panthers fail to do is recognize the systemic issues of inequality in black communities that led to dozens of riots in the 60s and 70s.  Just about every single riot has been linked back to job and housing discrimination, as mentioned in the famous Kerner Report.  Established by President Johnson in the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in 1968, the Kerner Committee found that:

Pervasive discrimination and segregation in employment, education and housing, which have resulted in the continuing exclusion of great numbers of Negroes from the benefits of economic progress... 

The frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances, and of “moving the system.” These frustrations are reflected in alienation and hostility toward the institutions of law and government and the white society which controls them, and in the reach toward racial consciousness and solidarity reflected in the slogan “Black Power.

The conditions in urban areas were exactly that: "frustrations of powerlessness," particularly economic powerlessness.  Power in the workplace was small, except for places like Detroit that the Revolutionary League of Black Workers was able to organize.  Given these constraints, what can be said is that the Black Panther Party's organizing efforts through mutual aid programs were miraculous.  Something that radicals have been unable to replicate to this day.