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December, 1978 - Nr* National BLACK MONITOR
On Black Use Os American Power
A Continuing Series Part 2
This series on “The Black Use of Ameri
can Power” stresses the historical differ
ences between European perceptions of
power, on the one hand, and African and
Native American perceptions of power, on
the other hand.
Our readers may wish to preserve the
entire series which provides positive insight
into why black Americans have related to
American power in a markedly different
manner than have white Americans. Your
'comments are invited.
The next article is entitled, “The African
Stem. ”
In the first of this series we noted that the
American use of power has been focused
primarily upon the pursuit of commercial
gain, which came to be the new means to,
and expression of, wealth.
The first European settlers in America
came under the cover of religion. But
commerce—or the amassing of wealth pri
marily through trade—was soon revealed
as the first (although largely-unspoken) text
or principle of New World religion.
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An amusing and instructive story is told
of the highly moralistic spinster, Queen
Elizabeth I of England, (1533-1603) in
regard to the place of “commerce” among
her religious priorities. Sir Walter Raleigh
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IISIIII
was said to have been gently scolded by the
deeply devout Queen for his trafficking in
African enslavement.
Sir Walter Raleigh, clever fox that he
was, turned the self-righteous Queen
around by simply whispering in her ear that
instead of quarreling with him and strain
ing her finances. Her Majesty might “do
well”—or even better—by investing some
of her royal bounty in the highly lucrative
enslavement traffic.
History records that the dutifully reli
gious Queen actually did catch the spirit of
the new religion (or the new spirit of the old
religion) and place commercial gain as a
first order of her religious duty.
Such was the spirit of the New World’s
religion of gain that the so-called “work
ethic,” now pervasive in American reli
gious life, came early to mean that com
merce and religion were practically synony
mous.
Indeed, when the difficult choice had to
be made as to whether to give up the prac
tice of human enslavement (and so risk
commercial loss) or to give up belief in
human value (and so deny a long expressed
idealism), the Americans found a clever
way out of their seeming dilemma.
They did this by resorting to the simple
device of declaring those individuals whom
they had enslaved to be of less than human
value. Blacks, for example, were noted in
the U.S. Constitution to be worth three
fifths of a man.
Such a device as this, while unthinkable
in Protestant Europe and in Catholic
Europe and South America, was but
another example of American adaptability,
Religion And Commerce
pragmatism and “justification by faith.”
Faith, we note, is by St. Paul’s definition
“the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things unseen.”
In this Pauline sense of faith, then, white
Americans were fully “justified” by that
for which neither evidence nor logic was at
hand. Wishful thinking is all that was
needed.
This tour de force (or twist of religious
logic) affords significant insight into the
kind of religious assumptions concerning
both commerce and power which those in
power have caused to prevail in America
today. Such assumptions enable Americans
—as 8 percent of the world’s population—
to use and control, with a sense of unques
tioned self-righteousness and religiosity,
nearly one-half of the world’s resources...
many of which are God-given (like land,
minerals, oil, etc.) and should be public
property except for short-term leaseholds.
This inevitably places black Americans in
an almost untenable position because they
were enslaved without any compensation.
And, as yet, have still been unpaid. As
Americans who have artificially been
denied relative power in regard to white
Americans, black Americans still share
somewhat powerlessly in what some con
sider the “corrupt fruits of the unjust and
An you supporting a block college of your choice?
inequitable commercial power” of our
nation as a whole.
What, then, are we as blacks to do?
t
At the very least, black Americans must
be mindful that we are—and remain—a
grossly compromised race for as long as we
share unquestioningly in even the leftover
fruits of ill-gotten (or any other kind of)
gain.
As perhaps fate would have it, blacks,
thus, are faced with a double burden. We
must somehow extricate ourselves from
inequities within our nation’s life. At the
same time, we must help America to call a
halt to inequities toward those outside of
our nation’s life.
The two tasks are inter-related.
The black use of power, within the
framework of the American experience,
must always be a highly tenuous adventure.
We as black Americans are confounded in
any choice we make. But we are doubly
confounded, if we make none in terms of
the exercise of power.
What may serve to redeem our circum
stance in some degree, however, is the
recognition that our lot is not to conform
to America’s implicit religious and com
mercial values but rather to help transform
them to something more equitable for all.
This suggests that there may be a host of
delicately-fine paths along which we may
travel by ourselves and with others. In this
way, we may yet be enabled to make use of
the power which is rightfully due to us as
black Americans. At the same time, this
process may make possible the re-direction
of the inequitable power relations with
others which our nation has inherited from
the past.
(To be continued. Your comments upon
these “Reflections” would be especially
appreciated and helpful.)