(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Orientering January 1968
There are now two books in Norwegian that complement one another in a very good way, and together they provide a very exhaustive picture of the situation of the American Negro. One is Kenneth B. Clark's "Black Ghetto," the other is Carmichael and Hamilton's "Black Power." The first is mostly a description of the situation. The other places the greatest emphasis on setting up a program for change.
Clark is a social scientist. However, his book is not a typical research project. It is not just statistical facts that are presented. Clark is a Negro himself, and has even grown up in the ghetto. His clear commitment gives the book a strength that a pure statistical study can never get. As he himself states in the preface: “The facts are, they do not give way, are not subject to interpretation. However, it is the truth, which is far more than the facts. ”
Clark's field of research is thus the black ghettos – those parts of the American cities where the Negroes are concentrated. By rendering despairing statements from random ghetto residents, he gives flesh and blood to the skeleton of institutional injustice he draws on: the economic supremacy of whites, housing speculation, poor housing conditions, poor schools and unemployment. And he shows the consequences: poverty, family dissolution, crime, drug abuse and so on.
In short, he shows what Carmichael calls institutional racism consists of. By institutional racism, Carmichael considers the injustice inflicted on the Negroes as the race of the entire economic and social system in the United States. This racism is more difficult to spot as racism than individual racism, represented by, for example, the Ku Klux Klan. It is apparently performed not by individuals, but by the system itself. Therefore, it is also much harder to crack. It cannot be eradicated by formal legislative amendments, such as civil law. Only by attacking the power relations in society can the Negroes challenge institutional racism.
This is the background for Carmichael's slogan of Black Power – Black Power. Where Clark's description ends, Carmichael and Hamilton say what the blacks must do. Their main thesis is that the Negroes must gain control over their own communities. Today, the ghetto is in the hands of white housing speculators and capitalists. If power is to be deprived of them, the Negroes must organize themselves politically. With examples, Carmichael and Hamilton show that this is of no use in the old parties. They are tools of the white power structure, and the Negroes who participate there either end up being thrown out or failing the Negroes and their demands: "These black leaders are just as powerful as the white clients allow them to be."
Carmichael and Hamilton therefore advocate that the Negroes must form their own party and that they not only have to attack certain sides of the injustice but challenge the entire power structure. This is how they look at the opportunities to win by peaceful means: “This book presents a political framework and ideology that represents the last reasonable chance for this society to get through its racial problems without prolonged destructive guerrillas. The book is no denying that such a violent war can be unavoidable. But if there is the slightest chance of avoiding it, the Black Power policy we describe is the only reasonable hope. "
Kenneth B. Clark:
Black ghetto.
Gyldendals Torch Books 1967.
Carmichael & Hamilton:
Black power.
Pax 1967.
See Black socialism in the United States
