Newspaper Page Text
September, 1977 - New National BLACK MONITOR
—MonitorMicroscope
A Close-Up View Os Third World Events"
i
ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE
... We may expect the Republic of South
Africa to be playing a “winning game” in
African politics, according to the maneu
vers which are presently unfolding. One
“successful ploy” has been to renege on its
promised independence to the territory of
South-West Africa which South Africa had
governed under a United Nations mandate.
South-West Africa was due for inde
pendence some time ago. But the South
African authorities managed to create all
kinds of problems regarding the move
toward independence in order to make
South-West Africa a major focus of inter
national concern in reference to South
Africa.
The plan has worked thus far in that
much less international concern has been
focused upon the move within South Africa
itself toward some accommodation to the
concept of black majority rule.
That the Western European nations and
the United States have been pleased with
this side stepping approach would seem
evident on the surface. Both they and the
United Nations leadership have accepted
the bait and have had quite little to say in
the aftermath of the major rioting in
Soweto about South Africa’s internal poli
tics. Just as the Republic of South Africa
intended, South-West Africa’s indepen
dence has become the major international
concern vis-a-vis South Africa.
Further, it has been an acknowledged
part of the South African plan to mollify
world opinion regarding its internal affairs
by offering Zimbabwe (or Rhodesia) as a
sacrificial lamb.
The South African government no longer
supports the permanent independence of
this runaway British Commonwealth com
munity and is courting black African
patience with South African affairs by en
couraging black majority rule for Rhodesia
(or Zimbabwe).
A third part of the South African plan
has been to promote a unique (and spuri
ous) type of cultural pluralism whereby
different cultural and racial groups would
each have their own territorial government.
Since the best lands are now appropriated
by whites, black majority “independence”
would mean no more than the creation of
thoroughly dependent black satellite states
ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE
Page 4
with South Africa freed of any social or
political responsibility.
Added to these ingredients has been a
massive propaganda campaign conducted
on two fronts. The information ministry
has published a free history of South Africa
which is being distributed primarily to the
American business and academic commun
ity. This highly mythologi zed material is
designed to create the impression that
South Africa has problems peculiar in all of
the world’s history and that South Africa is
handling its racial and cultural problems
marvelously well.
The other front for this propaganda
campaign has been the “Letters to the Edi
tor” columns of the major white news
papers and the use of public television time.
The letters to the editors have been
pouring in and selected out for printing at
an amazingly rapid rate and have been writ
ten, apparently spontaneously (so the
intent seems to surface), by indignant South
Africans living in the United States.
These South Africans residing in the
United States have the same general theme,
whether writing to the editors or appearing
on public television. Their concern is that
South Africa is grossly maligned.
This four-pronged ploy has worked.. .at
least temporarily. What surfaces most
importantly is that those with the power of
the white press have collaborated unabash
edly with the apartheid partisans of the
Republic of South Africa.
So far as black Americans are concerned,
then, the concern for human rights»perhaps,
must not be seen as uppermost among
either the U.N. leadership or among the
major power blocs within the United-
States.
The whole South African scenario
should serve ample notice to black Ameri
cans that all is not well.. .either at home or
abroad.
... What about Cuba? Cuba clearly has
sought renewed relations with the United
States but the prospect of open relations
with its big neighbor to the north offers
perhaps infinitely more perils than good
promises for Cuba.
These negative possibilities seem appar
ent on several counts.
One is that official American policy for
some 10 to 15 years has been deadly anti-
Cuban. The term “deadly” is used here to
denote the fact that both Presidents Eisen
hower and Kennedy admittedly sanctioned
death plots against Premier Fidel Castro.
The U.S. government does not now hide or
ON THE NATIONAL SCENE- IN THE LAW
Have you given to Operation PUSH, OIC, SCLC, NA ACP or the local Urban League this month?
in any way disclaim this allegation.
A problem immediately arises from the
fact that the anti-Castro Cuban exiles who
have remained committed to Castro’s exter
mination, in spite of an official presidential
policy change, will now have far greater
access to Cuban entry. What, then, will the
Castro government do to minimize the
possibility that anti-Castro elements from
the United States will seek to enter Cuba
and fulfill their long-postponed vengeance
against the Castro government?
On the political front, the Castro govern
ment will face fresh problems with the
ostensibly much-needed adoption of U.S.
technology. With the importation of
American technology there comes the
strong possibility that unemployment may
grow, as machines make human hands
unnecessary.
Currently Cuba has no unemployment
problem, since all Cubans work. But the
use of human hands has left production
requirements unmet. If, by the aid of
American technology, the production re
quirements are met, then some unemploy
ment may result. Politically, this could
have far-reaching effects for a socialistic
and participatory economy, if capitalistic
technology casts the shadow of obsoles
cence over Cuba’s current ideological
economy.
ON THE NATIONAL SCENE
.. .The year 1977 will perhaps be looked
upon as at least as significant as the year
1967 when blacks, in a wide variety of
ways, gave expression to a new sense of self
and disclaimed old definitions imposed
upon blacks by others.
As in 1967, Dr. Benjamin Mays, an
intrepid warrior always sensitive to and in
the vanguard of the changing times,
remains a spokesman of the emerging
mood. The black self-statement in 1977
surfaces in the support given by blacks to
Andrew Young.
In this sense, it has not been Mr. Young
the ambassador but a Mr. Young who has
symbolized the unexpressed feelings and
sentiments... and aggressiveness!... of
black Americans who has been accorded
unprecedented black support.
The surprising aspect of black support
for Andrew Young, especially during the
early part of 1977, was the almost total
polarization of at least vocal white and
black opinion. Even more revealing was the
thoroughly unapologetic tone of black
comments opposed to those of whites, a
fresh departure in all of the history of black
America, to say the least.
It matters not that such unqualified sup
port could not be sustained without some
breach. The undeniable fact is that, at least
for once, “we did it”!
...The Andrew Young affair has far
reaching aspects, particularly in Mr.
Young’s statements in two related areas.
One is Mr. Young’s open assertion that
racism abounds among us.
In much of our popular view, we con
tinue to think in the outmoded terms of
“racial prejudice.” The concept of racial
prejudice is not greatly used in social
science thought today; rather the concept
of racism is employed.
Prejudice has been taken to refer to indi
vidual judgments arrived at on the basis of
personal predisposition or personal pre
judgment (hence prejudice).
The concept of racism says something
quite different. It conveys the notion that
racial views are a part of our socially
inherited way of life; that in America, for
example, we all live in a pro-white culture.
Thus when Mr. Young asserts that all of
us, including himself, are racist, he suggests
that all of us are born into a perhaps
pathologically pro-white society or culture.
None of us can ever completely overcome
our cultural conditioning. Thus all of us
tend unconsciously to be self-hating as
blacks, since inescapably we are pro-white
in cultural orientation.
The philosopher Jean Genet, in his intro
duction to George Jackson’s Soledad
Brother, notes doubtless devastatingly in
this regard: “Every young American black
who writes is trying to find himself and test
himself and sometimes, at the very center
of his being, in his own heart, discovers a
white man he must annihilate.” (page 7)
Racism pervades the western world
culture which today encompasses probably
the entire globe. The racism here is not pro
black but pro-white. It is this pro-white
mind set in our entire world which Jean
Genet suggests we must annihilate.
In this light, Mr. Young has performed a
service of immense importance in surfacing
the centrality of racist thought and racist
mores of a pro-white nature in all of our
lives, as a kind of enervating sickness at the
very least.
The second line of thought developed by
Mr. Young is related in terms of its impact
potentially for black Americans.
Mr. Young has faced, in a candid
manner which few among us would have
(Continued on page 5.)
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