Certain concepts are difficult to define. I enjoy gaining perspective from others who have made the attempt. Every so often, I make the effort to copy others’ definitions here. I hope you find this as useful as I have.
Black Power
Black Panther Party Magazine, April 25, 1967, Vol. 1, No. 1, p.4, col. 1.
“Black People must realize that the time is short and growing shorter by the day. Check it out. People talk about “Power”. There is White Power, Black Power, Yellow Power, Green Power, etc. but all Black People want out of all these different forms of Power is BLACK POWER. Black People want and need the power to stop the white racist power structure from grinding the life out of the Black Race through the daily operation f this system which is designed to exploit and oppress Black People.
Wright, Richard. Black Power: Three Books From Exile: Black Power, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen! Harper Perennial Modern Classics. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008. / Wright, Richard. Black Power. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
Wright’s visit to Gold Coast and conversation with Kwame Nkrumah.
“You have fused tribalism with modern politics,” I said.
”That’s exactly it,” he said. “Nobody wanted to touch these people. The missionaries would go just so far, and no farther toward them. One can only organize them by going where they are, living with them, eating with them, sharing their lives. We are making a special drive to enlist women in the party; they have been left out of our national life long enough. In the words of Lenin, I’ve asked the cooks to come out of their kitchens and learn how to rule.” (59-60)
“The adoption of the concept of Black Power is one of the most legitimate and healthy developments in American politics and race relations in our time. The concept of Black Power speaks to all the needs mentioned in this chapter. It is a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to begin to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support those organizations. It is a call to reject the racist institutions and values of this society.” (44)
King, Martin Luther. Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community? Boston: Beacon Press, 2010. [1968]
“First, it is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain. For centuries the Negro has been caught in the tentacles of white power. Many Negroes have given up faith in the white majority because “white power” with total control has left them empty-handed. So in reality the call for Black Power is a reaction to the failure of white power…
Second, Black Power, in its broad and positive meaning, is a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their legitimate goals. No one can deny that the Negro is in dire need of this kind of legitimate power. Indeed, one of the great problems that the Negro confronts is his lack of power. From the old plantations of the South to the newer ghettos of the North, the Negro has been confined to a life of voicelessness and powerlessness. Stripped of the right to make decisions concerning his life and destiny, he has been subject to the authoritarian and sometimes whimsical decisions of the white power structure. The plantation and the ghetto were created by those who had power both to confine those who had no power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The problem of transforming the ghetto is, therefore, a problem of power—a confrontation between the forces of power demanding change and the forces of power dedicated to preserving the status quo.
Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love…Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.
There is nothing essentially wrong with power. The problem is that in America power is unequally distributed. This has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through love and moral suasion devoid of power and white Americans to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience…
Black Power is also a call for the resources to achieve economic security…
Finally, Black Power is a psychological call to manhood. For years the Negro has ben taught that he is nobody, that his color is a sign of his biological depravity, that his being has been stamped with an indelible imprint of inferiority, that his whole history has been soiled with the filth of worthlessness. All too few people realize how slavery and racial segregation have scarred the soul and wounded the spirit of the black man. The whole dirty business of slavery was based on the premise that the Negro was a thing to be used, not a person to be respected.” (33-39)"
Cone, James H. Black Theology and Black Power. New York: Seabury Press, 1969.
"It means complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary." The methods may include selective buying, boycotting, marching, or even rebellion. Black Power means black freedom, black self-determination, wherein black people no longer view themselves as without human dignity but as men, human beings with the ability to carry out their own destiny. In short, as Stokely Carmichael would say, Black Power means T.C.B., Take Care of Business--Black folk taking care of black folks' business, not on the terms of the oppressor, but on those of the oppressed." (6)
Joseph, Peniel E. “The Black Power Movement : A State of the Field” 96, no. December (2009): 751–76.
“These groups all found a measure of unity and a national spokesman in Malcom X. At its core the black power movement, in contrast to the struggle for civil rights, privileged a view of black empowerment that was local, national, and international in scope, held political self-determination as sacrosanct, and called for a redefined black identity that connected black Americans to a national and global political project based on racial solidarity and a shared history of racial oppression.” (753)
Biondi, Martha. The Black Revolution on Campus. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2012.
“Black Power emphasized the creation of Black-controlled institutions and racial solidarity and entailed a vigorous emphasis on culture—both in celebrating African American culture and in seeing it as a catalyst for political action and the forging of a new Black consciousness.” (4)
“Black Power affected African American identity and politics as much as any speech, march, or legal victory of the civil rights movement. Its thrust was “black nationalism,” though Black Power was not necessarily nationalist. Black Power employed—even co-opted—the activism typified in civil rights struggles and operated on basic assumptions of rights and privileges. In essence, it demanded inclusion while advocating autonomy and self-determination. It asserted black access to full citizenship rights while conspicuously cultivating pride in much that was not American. Black Power was many things to many people and an enigma to most. Two fundamental themes, however, were widely celebrated among proponents: black pride and black self-determination. From the traditions of black nationalists (and some integrationists) there developed a fundamentally new system of beliefs that shaped the political currents of the late 1960s and beyond.” (2)
8/17/20 - Just found this goldmine, yet to be checked out: https://www.crmvet.org/docs/bpwrdocs.htm
Black Studies
Katherine McKittrick and Daniel McKittrick on “What is Black Studies?” and Black Studies as a discipline at Queen’s University
Freedom
Adams, Catherine, and Elizabeth H. Pleck. Love of Freedom: Black Women in Colonial and Revolutionary New England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
From pp. 12-14
“To be more accurate, black women had four major definitions of freedom, beginning with the most obvious one, that freedom meant legal self-ownership. Freedom did not arise simply because a white person granted it to a black person but because an individual enslaved man or woman won it in a court fight. There was a logical connection between the dehumanization of slavery and the emphasis on legal ownership of the self. If slavery was theft, then masters had purchased stolen goods, and these goods had to be restored to their rightful owners, individuals who owned themselves just as individuals also owned pieces of property. Black women who upheld this legal definition of self-ownership did not envision the individual standing alone or apart from her family or community—nor did Samuel Adams or John Hancock for that matter, but they did regard themselves as “individuals” whose right to freedom could be upheld in a court of law and who were deserving of the same kind of legal protections others enjoyed. Thus, New England legal culture and its definition of individual liberties structured this definition of freedom.
Enslaved men and women also defined freedom as the ownership of property other than the self, the economic freedom that came with owning a house or a family farm. In Central or West Africa land was owned collectively, by a lineage, rather than by individuals. In this respect it can be said that blacks wanted what whites in New England already had, since land ownership was widespread in the region. Yet economic independence always had a racial meaning because a place of one’s own meant independence from whites. In urban areas free blacks hoped to own their own home or their own shop (usually with living quarters in the back). The time to defend a right is when it is threatened, and black women went to court to hold onto their land when facing eviction or harassment by white neighbors.
Black women of New England also defined freedom as professing their faith in Christ. More than a few of the Africans from Angola had been baptized and converted to Catholicism but becoming a believing Protestant was clearly a New England innovation. Some enslaved women sought to capitalize on the prevailing New England opinion that a fellow Christian should not enslave another believer. Although there was some early ambiguity on the question, by the early eighteenth century New England Puritans specified clearly that baptized slaves did not have to be freed. Christian conversion was never merely a strategy for gaining manumission; it was thought of more broadly as a faith that promised not simply freedom from suffering but also the equality of all Christian souls.
This ideal of respectability applied to the conduct of both men and women and spelled out distinct gender roles for each sex. Black men were supposed to show courage in war, keep their eyes open for sharp land deals, negotiate effectively and engage in alliances with well-meaning whites; more broadly, they were called upon to be good providers for their families and protectors of women and children. Women were never thought to be able to drive a hard bargain. As exemplars of feminine respectability free black women were instead expected to be dutiful wives, mothers, and daughters. While men, too, were supposed to be sexually virtuous, women could be judged more harshly for their sexual sins. As was the case for whites, sex prior to marriage was not a grievous failing so long as a couple married soon after the woman became pregnant, but cohabitation, adultery, and premarital sex that did not lead to marriage was decidedly so.
A fourth definition of freedom for black women was freedom for the family, a family living in its own place of habitation. Freedom for the family meant more than adopting an identity as a wife, mother, or daughter, since many enslaved women, including Hagar Blackmore, had insisted upon the importance of those identities, even as they remained slaves. Nor did freedom for the family mean returning to Africa to find ones kin since almost all women of African descent in New England had abandoned such efforts. Instead, it meant reunification of family members living in New England in their own place, where they might escape the constant demands, sexual overtures, condescending remarks, and preying eyes of white owners.
One form of freedom was rarely sought without pursuing the others; these four definitions of freedom easily flowed into each other. Black women and their families understood they might have to go to court to hold onto their own land. Conversion to Christianity ushered in new ideas of spiritual freedom as well as new ideals about family, marriage, and sexuality. It was only a small step for many women to move from this concept of equality of souls to the belief that rights (sometimes called “natural rights”) such as that of ownership of the self given by God. It made sense to believe that if God had granted these rights, then an owner was doing an evil deed in taking them away. Freedom for the family meant not only reuniting separated fam ily members but also achieving the goal of economic security or acquiring property. After a woman converted to Christianity she often legally married her partner, became a church member, sought baptism for her children, and hoped that her master might emancipate her and her family. There was also a reciprocal relationship between freedom and identity, since visions of freedom shaped a woman’s sense of self and brought into focus certain ideal types of womanhood—the yeoman farm wife, the pious Christian mother, or the respectable African lady.
Black women’s quest for freedom during their lifetimes was different than that of black men because men had more opportunities to gain skills, even during slavery, more personal mobility, and possessed the knowledge that even though whites considered them heathens or inferiors, they were also the superior sex….”
Wright, Richard. Black Power: Three Books From Exile: Black Power, The Color Curtain, and White Man, Listen! Harper Perennial Modern Classics. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008. / Wright, Richard. Black Power. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
My mind flew back to the many conversations that I’d had in Chicago, New York, London, Paris, Rome, Buenos Aires about freedom, and I could picture again in my mind the white faces of friends screwed up in disgust and distaste when the word “freedom” was mentioned, and I could hear again in my memory the tersley deprecating questions shot at me across a dinner table:
”Freedom? What do you mean, freedom?”But here in Africa “freedom” was more than a word; an African had no doubts about the meaning of the word “freedom.” It mean the right to public assembly, the right to physical movement, the right to make known his views, the right to elect men of his choice to public office, and the right to recall them if they failed in their promises. At a time when the Western world grew embarrassed at the sound fo the word “freedom,” these people knew that it meant the right to shape their own destiny as they wished. Of that they had no doubt, and no threats could intimidate them about it; they might be cowed by guns and planes, but they’d not change their minds about the concrete nature of the freedom that they wanted and were willing to die for…” (54)
Bois, W.E.B. Du. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: The Free Press, 1992.
“All these contending and antagonistic groups spoke different and unknown tongues; to the Negro “Freedom” was God; to the poor white “Freedom was nothing—he had more than he had use for; to the planter “Freedom” for the poor was laziness and for the rich, control of the poor worker; for the Northern business man “Freedom” was opportunity to get rich.” (347)
“Passing”
Hobbs, Allyson. A Chosen Exile. A History of Racial Passing in American Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.
“To pass as white was to make an anxious decision to turn one’s back on a black racial identity and to claim to belong to a group in which one was not legally assigned.” (5)
“To pass as white during this period [antebellum] was to escape—not necessarily from blackness, but from slavery—with the intention of recovering precious relationships and living under the more secure conditions of freedom.” (5)
“After emancipation, to pass as white was considered by many African Americans (and most famously by James Weldon Johnson in the 1912 novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man) to be ‘sell[ing] one’s birthright for a mess of pottage.’” (6)
“In the short-lived but hopeful moment of Reconstruction and later, during the long years of Jim Crow, passing meant striking out on one’s own and leaving behind a family and a people.” (6)
Race
Brooks Higginbotham, Evelyn. “African-American Women’s History and the Metalanguage of Race” 17, no. 2 (1992): 251–74.
"Like gender and class, then, race must be seen as a social construction predicated on the recognition of difference and signifying the simultaneous distinguishing and positioning of groups vis-à-vis one another. More than this, race is a highly contested representation of relations of power between social categories by which individuals are identified and identify themselves. The recognition of racial distinctions emanates from and adapts to multiple users of power in society. Perceived as "natural" and "appropriate," such racial categories are strategically necessary for the functioning of power in countless institutional and ideological forms, both explicit and subtle."
Racism
Jackson, George. Blood in My Eye. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 1990 [1972].
“The major obstacle to a united left in this country is white racism. There are three categories of white racists: the overt, self-satisfied racist who doesn’t attempt to hide his antipathy; the self-interdicting racist who harbors and nurtures racism in spite of his best efforts; and the unconscious racist, who has no awareness of his racist preconceptions.” (11)
“What is racism? The word has represented the daily reality to millions of black people for centuries, yet it is rarely defined—perhaps just because that reality has been such a commonplace. By “racism” we mean the predication of decisions and policies of considerations of race for the purpose of subordinating a racial group and maintaining control over that group.” (3)
Racial Liberalism
“Liberalism has furnished a political vocabulary for a range of projects and purposes, with disparate political actors utilizing its key signifiers (rights, freedom, opportunity, progress, etc.) for distinct and sometimes conflicting goals. But organizations and individuals that embraced racial liberalism in the immediate postwar era generally shared the belief that racism and racial subjugation were fundamentally incompatible with the emancipatory tenets of the American Creed, and they supported various types of government intervention to ensure that “private” prejudices did not encumber the public good. For these groups, racial liberalism both described an idealized state of social and political relations—equal treatment under the law without regard to race—as well as a strategy for achieving that change. Progress toward racial equality would be realized when atavistic ethnocentric impulses steadily gave way to a more tolerant and inclusionary Americanism—a neutral and indeed universal form of political judgment that was inherently indifferent to social location, position, or perspective.” (14)
HoSang, Daniel Martinez. Racial Propositions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
Restrictive Covenants
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. The Origins of the Urban Crisis. Princeton University Press, 2010.
“An innovation of the twentieth century, covenants were clauses incorporated into deeds which had as their intention the maintenance of “desirable residential characteristics” of a neighborhood. They sought to preserve both architectural and social homogeneity. Restrictive covenants included prohibitions against commercial activity, the division of buildings into rental units, the placement of signs on property, the construction of multiple-residents homes in predominantly single-family areas, and the purchase and occupancy of homes by racial and ethnic minorities.” (44)
Slavery
Young, Jason R. Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry South in the Era of Slavery. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.
“Slavery is, on the one hand, a mechanism for the forced extraction of labor…At the same time, however, slavery transcends the sum of the mechanisms used to forcibly extract labor; it is more than the shackle stocks, and auction block, and its scope extends beyond the reach of the whip. Slavery reflects an ideological engagement that relies on the religious, economic, political, and philosophical sanction of the society that supports it. It requires the ideological consent of society at large, a consent that must be written into law, justified in the church, rationalized in the schoolhouse.” (Introduction - *Will return to insert page #)