chicano

SOCIAL P R O B L E M S F O R M A T C H A N G E

B E G I N N I N G W I T H T H E S U M M E R , 1 9 6 9 I S S U E

Contributors should consult current issues of the American Sociological Review for samples of the new form.

I N T E R N A L COLONIALISM A N D G H E T T O R E V O L T 1

ROBERT BLAUNER

University of California, Berkeley

The paper explores the thesis that white-Black relations in America are essentially those of colonizer and colonized. The concept of colonization as a process is dis- tinguished from colonialism as a social system in order to isolate the common features in the experience and situation of Afro-Americans and the colonial peoples. Three contemporary social movements are analyzed in this light: urban riots, cultural nationalism, and ghetto control politics. Some dilemmas within these move- ments are considered in terms of the ambiguities that exist when colonization has taken place outside of a colonial political context. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the white role in ghettoization and decolonization.

It is becoming almost fashionable to analyze American racial conflict today in terms of the colonial analogy. I shall

1 This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the University of California Centennial Program, "Studies in Violence," Los Angeles, June 1, 1968. For criticisms and ideas that have improved an earlier draft, I am indebted to Robert Wood, Lin- coln Bergman, and Gary Marx. As a good colonialist I have probably restated (read: stolen) more ideas from the writings of Kenneth Clark, Stokely Carmichael, Frantz Fanon, and especially such contributors to the Black Panther Party (Oakland) news- paper as Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, El- dridge Cleaver, and Kathleen Cleaver than I have appropriately credited or generated myself. In self-defense I should state that I began working somewhat independently on a colonial analysis of American race relations in the fall of 1965; see my "White- wash Over Watts: The Failure of the McCone Report," Trans-action, 3 (March- April, 1966), pp. 3-9, 54.

argue in this paper that the utility of this perspective depends upon a dis- tinction between colonization as a process and colonialism as a social, economic, and political system. It is the experience of colonization that Afro- Americans share with many of the non- white people of the world. But this subjugation has taken place in a societal context that differs in important re- spects from the situation of "classical colonialism." In the body of this essay I shall look at some major develop- ments in Black protest—the urban riots, cultural nationalism, and the movement for ghetto control—as collective re- sponses to colonized status. Viewing our domestic situation as a special form of colonization outside a context of a colonial system will help explain some of the dilemmas and ambiguities within these movements.

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394 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The present crisis in American life has brought about changes in social per- spectives and the questioning of long accepted frameworks. Intellectuals and social scientists have been forced by the pressure of events to look at old defini- tions of the character of our society, the role of racism, and the workings of basic institutions. The depth and vola- tility of contemporary racial conflict challenge sociologists in particular to question the adequacy of theoretical models by which we have explained American race relations in the past.

For a long time the distinctiveness of the Negro situation among the ethnic minorities was placed in terms of color, and the systematic discrimination that follows from our deep-seated racial prejudices. This was sometimes called the caste theory, and while provocative, it missed essential and dynamic fea- tures of American race relations. In the past ten years there has been a tendency to view Afro-Americans as another ethnic group not basically different in experience from previous ethnics and whose "immigration" condition in the North would in time follow their up- ward course. The inadequacy of this model is now clear—even the Kerner Report devotes a chapter to criticizing this analogy. A more recent (though hardly new) approach views the es- sence of racial subordination in eco- nomic class terms: Black people as an underclass are to a degree specially ex- ploited and to a degree economically dispensable in an automating society. Important as are economic factors, the power of race and racism in America cannot be sufficiently explained through class analysis. Into this theory vacuum steps the model of internal colonialism. Problematic and imprecise as it is, it gives hope of becoming a framework that can integrate the insights of caste

and racism, ethnicity, culture, and eco- nomic exploitation into an overall con- ceptual scheme. At the same time, the danger of the colonial model is the imposition of an artificial analogy which might keep us from facing up to the fact (to quote Harold Cruse) that "the American black and white social phenomenon is a uniquely new world thing."2

During the late 1950's, identification with African nations and other colonial or formerly colonized peoples grew in importance among Black militants.3 As a result the U. S. was increasingly seen as a colonial power and the concept of domestic colonialism was introduced into the political analysis and rhetoric of militant nationalists. During the same period Black social theorists began developing this frame of reference for explaining American realities. As early as 1962, Cruse characterized race rela- tions in this country as "domestic colo- nialism."4 Three years later in Dark Ghetto, Kenneth Clark demonstrated how the political, economic, and social structure of Harlem was essentially that of a colony.5 Finally in 1967, a full-blown elaboration of "internal co- lonialism" provided the theoretical

2 Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution, New York: 1968, p. 214.

3 Nationalism, including an orientation toward Africa, is no new development. It has been a constant tendency within Afro- American politics. See Cruse, ibid, esp. chaps. 5-7.

4 This was six years before the publica- tion of The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, New York: Morrow, 1968, which brought Cruse into prominence. Thus the 1962 article was not widely read until its re- printing in Cruse's essays, Rebellion or Revolution, op. cit.

8 Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto, New York: Harper and Row, 1965. Clark's analysis first appeared a year earlier in Youth in the Ghetto, New York: Haryou Associates, 1964.

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Internal Colonialism 395

framework for Carmichael and Hamil- ton's widely read Black Power.6 The following year the colonial analogy gained currency and new "respectabil- ity" when Senator McCarthy habitually referred to Black Americans as a colo- nized people during his campaign. While the rhetoric of internal colonial- ism was catching on, other social scien- tists began to raise questions about its appropriateness as a scheme of analysis.

The colonial analysis has been re- jected as obscurantist and misleading by scholars who point to the signifcant differences in history and social-politi- cal conditions between our domestic patterns and what took place in Africa and India. Colonialism traditionally re- fers to the establishment of domination over a geographically external political unit, most often inhabited by people of a different race and culture, where this domination is political and eco- nomic, and the colony exists subordi- nated to and dependent upon the mother country. Typically the colo- nizers exploit the land, the raw mate- rials, the labor, and other resources of the colonized nation; in addition a for- mal recognition is given to the differ- ence in power, autonomy, and political status, and various agencies are set up to maintain this subordination. Seem- ingly the analogy must be stretched beyond usefulness if the American ver- sion is to be forced into this model. For here we are talking about group relations within a society; the mother country—colony separation in geo- graphy is absent. Though whites cer- tainly colonized the territory of the original Americans, internal coloniza- tion of Afro-Americans did not involve the settlement of whites in any land

8 Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamil- ton, Black Power, New York: Random, 1967.

that was unequivocably Black. And un- like the colonial situation, there has been no formal recognition of differing power since slavery was abolished out- side the South. Classic colonialism in- volved the control and exploitation of the majority of a nation by a minority of outsiders. Whereas in America the people who are oppressed were them- selves originally outsiders and are a numerical minority.

This conventional critique of "inter- nal colonialism" is useful in pointing to the differences between our domestic patterns and the overseas situation. But in its bold attack it tends to lose sight of common experiences that have been historically shared by the most subju- gated racial minorities in America and non-white peoples in some other parts of the world. For understanding the most dramatic recent developments on the race scene, this common core ele- ment—which I shall call colonization —may be more important than the un- deniable divergences between the two contexts.

The common features ultimately re- late to the fact that the classical colo- nialism of the imperialist era and American racism developed out of the same historical situation and reflected a common world economic and power stratification. The slave trade for the most part preceded the imperialist par- tition and economic exploitation of Africa, and in fact may have been a necessary prerequisite for colonial con- quest—since it helped deplete and pac- ify Africa, undermining the resistance to direct occupation. Slavery contri- buted one of the basic raw materials for the textile industry which provided much of the capital for the West's in- dustrial development and need for eco- nomic expansionism. The essential con- dition for both American slavery and

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396 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

European colonialism was the power domination and the technological su- periority of the Western world in its relation to peoples of non-Western and non-white origins. This objective su- premacy in technology and military power buttressed the West's sense of cultural superiority, laying the basis for racist ideologies that were elaborated to justify control and exploitation of non-white people. Thus because classi- cal colonialism and America's internal version developed out of a similar bal- ance of technological, cultural, and power relations, a common process of social oppression characterized the racial patterns in the two contexts— despite the variation in political and social structure.

There appear to be four basic com- ponents of the colonization complex. The first refers to how the racial group enters into the dominant society (whether colonial power or not). Co- lonization begins with a forced, invol- untary entry. Second, there is an impact on the culture and social organization of the colonized people which is more than just a result of such "natural" processes as contact and acculturation. The colonizing power carries out a policy which constrains, transforms, or destroys indigenous values, orientations, and ways of life. Third, colonization involves a relationship by which mem- bers of the colonized group tend to be administered by representatives of the dominant power. There is an experi- ence of being managed and manipu- lated by outsiders in terms of ethnic status.

A final fundament of colonization is racism. Racism is a principle of social domination by which a group seen as inferior or different in terms of alleged biological characteristics is exploited, controlled, and oppressed socially and

psychically by a superordinate group. Except for the marginal case of Jap- anese imperialism, the major examples of colonialism have involved the sub- jugation of non-white Asian, African, and Latin American peoples by white European powers. Thus racism has generally accompanied colonialism. Race prejudice can exist without coloniza- tion—the experience of Asian-Ameri- can minorities is a case in point—but racism as a system of domination is part of the complex of colonization.

The concept of colonization stresses the enormous fatefulness of the his- torical factor, namely the manner in which a minority group becomes a part of the dominant society.7 The crucial difference between the colonized Amer- icans and the ethnic immigrant minori- ties is that the latter have always been able to operate fairly competitively within that relatively open section of the social and economic order because these groups came voluntarily in search of a better life, because their move- ments in society were not administra- tively controlled, and because they transformed their culture at their own pace—giving up ethnic values and in- stitutions when it was seen as a desir- able exchange for improvements in social position.

In present-day America, a major de- vice of Black colonization is the power- less ghetto. As Kenneth Clark describes the situation:

Ghettoes are the consequence of the im- position of external power and the in- stitutionalization of powerlessness. In this respect, they are in fact social, political,

7 As Eldridge Cleaver reminds us, "Black people are a stolen people held in a colonial status on stolen land, and any analysis which does not acknowledge the colonial status of black people cannot hope to deal with the real problem." "The Land Ques- tion," Ramparts, 6 (May, 1968), p . 51.

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Internal Colonialism 397

educational, and above all—economic colonies. Those confined within the ghetto walls are subject peoples. They are vic- tims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt and fear of their masters. . . .

The community can best be described in terms of the analogy of a powerless colony. Its political leadership is divided, and all but one or two of its political leaders are shortsighted and dependent upon the larger political power structure. Its social agencies are financially pre- carious and dependent upon sources of support outside the community. Its churches are isolated or dependent. Its economy is dominated by small businesses which are largely owned by absentee owners, and its tenements and other real property are also owned by absentee land- lords.

Under a system of centralization, Har- lem's schools are controlled by forces outside of the community. Programs and policies are supervised and determined by individuals who do not live in the com- munity . . . 8

Of course many ethnic groups in America have lived in ghettoes. What make the Black ghettoes an expression of colonized status are three special features. First, the ethnic ghettoes arose more from voluntary choice, both in the sense of the choice to immigrate to America and the decision to live among one's fellow ethnics. Second, the im- migrant ghettoes tended to be a one and two generation phenomenon; they were actually way-stations in the pro- cess of acculturation and assimilation. When they continue to persist as in the case of San Francisco's Chinatown, it is because they are big business for the ethnics themselves and there is a new stream of immigrants. The Black ghetto on the other hand has been a more permanent phenomenon, although some individuals do escape it. But most relevant is the third point. European ethnic groups like the Poles, Italians,

8 Youth in the Ghetto, op. cit., pp. 10- 11; 79-80.

and Jews generally only experienced a brief period, often less than a genera- tion, during which their residential buildings, commercial stores, and other enterprises were owned by outsiders. The Chinese and Japanese faced handi- caps of color prejudice that were al- most as strong as the Blacks faced, but very soon gained control of their in- ternal communities, because their tra- ditional ethnic culture and social or- ganization had not been destroyed by slavery and internal colonization. But Afro-Americans are distinct in the extent to which their segregated com- munities have remained controlled eco- nomically, politically, and administra- tively from the outside. One indicator of this difference is the estimate that the "income of Chinese-Americans from Chinese-owned businesses is in proportion to their numbers 45 times as great as the income of Negroes from Negro owned businesses."9 But what is true of business is also true for the other social institutions that operate within the ghetto. The educators, po- licemen, social workers, politicians, and others who administer the affairs of ghetto residents are typically whites who live outside the Black community. Thus the ghetto plays a strategic role as the focus for the administration by outsiders which is also essential to the structure of overseas colonialism.10

9 N . Glazer and D . P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T., 1963, p. 37.

10 " w h e n we speak of Negro social disabilities under capitalism, . . . we refer to the fact that he does not own anything— even what is ownable in his own commu- nity. Thus to fight for black liberation is to fight for his right to own. The Negro is politically compromised today because he owns nothing. He has little voice in the affairs of state because he owns nothing. The fundamental reason why the Negro bourgeois-democratic revolution has been

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398 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The colonial status of the Negro community goes beyond the issue of ownership and decision-making within Black neighborhoods. The Afro-Ameri- can population in most cities has very little influence on the power structure and institutions of the larger metro- polis, despite the fact that in numerical terms, Blacks tend to be the most size- able of the various interest groups. A recent analysis of policy-making in Chicago estimates that "Negroes really hold less than 1 percent of the effective power in the Chicago metropolitan area. [Negroes are 20 percent of Cook County's population.] Realistically the power structure of Chicago is hardly less white than that of Mississippi."11

Colonization outside of a traditional colonial structure has its own special conditions. The group culture and social structure of the colonized in America is less developed; it is also less autono- mous. In addition, the colonized are a numerical minority, and furthermore they are ghettoized more totally and

aborted is because American capitalism has prevented the development of a black class of capitalist owners of institutions and eco- nomic tools. To take one crucial example, Negro radicals today are severely hampered in their tasks of educating the black masses on political issues because Negroes do not own any of the necessary means of propa- ganda and communication. The Negro owns no printing presses, he has no stake in the networks of the means of communication. Inside his own communities he does not own the house he lives in, the property he lives on, nor the wholesale and retail sources from which he buys his commodi- ties. H e does not own the edifices in which he enjoys culture and entertainment or in which he socializes. In capitalist society, an individual or group that does not own any- thing is powerless." H . Cruse, "Behind the Black Power Slogan," in Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution, op. cit., pp. 238-39.

1 1 Harold M. Baron, "Black Powerless- ness in Chicago," Trans-action, 6 (Nov., 1968), pp. 27-33.

are more dispersed than people under classic colonialism. Though these reali- ties affect the magnitude and direction of response, it is my basic thesis that the most important expressions of pro- test in the Black community during the recent years reflect the colonized status of Afro-America. Riots, programs of separation, politics of community con- trol, the Black revolutionary move- ments, and cultural nationalism each represent a different strategy of attack on domestic colonialism in America. Let us now examine some of these movements.

RIOT OR REVOLT?

The so-called riots are being increas- ingly recognized as a preliminary if primitive form of mass rebellion against a colonial status. There is still a ten- dency to absorb their meaning within the conventional scope of assimilation- integration politics: some commentators stress the material motives involved in looting as a sign that the rioters want to join America's middle-class affluence just like everyone else. That motives are mixed and often unconscious, that Black people want good furniture and television sets like whites is beside the point. The guiding impulse in most major outbreaks has not been integra- tion with American society, but an at- tempt to stake out a sphere of control by moving against that society and de- stroying the symbols of its oppression.

In my critique of the McCone report I observed that the rioters were assert- ing a claim to territoriality, an unor- ganized and rather inchoate attempt to gain control over their community or "turf."12 In succeeding disorders also the thrust of the action has been the attempt to clear out an alien presence,

1 2 R. Blauner, "Whitewash Over Watts," op. cit.

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white men and officials, rather than a drive to kill whites as in a conventional race riot. The main attacks have been directed at the property of white busi- ness men and at the police who operate in the Black community "like an army of occupation" protecting the interests of outside exploiters and maintaining the domination over the ghetto by the central metropolitan power structure.13

The Kerner report misleads when it attempts to explain riots in terms of in- tegration: "What the rioters appear to be seeking was fuller participation in the social order and the material bene- fits enjoyed by the majority of Ameri- can citizens. Rather than rejecting the American system, they were anxious to obtain a place for themselves in it."14

More accurately, the revolts pointed to alienation from this system on the part of many poor and also not-so-poor Blacks. The sacredness of private prop- erty, that unconsciously accepted bul- wark of our social arrangements, was rejected; people who looted apparently without guilt generally remarked that they were taking things that "really be- longed" to them anyway.18 Obviously

1 3 "The police function to support and enforce the interests of the dominant po- litical, social, and economic interests of the town" is a statement made by a former police scholar and official, according to A. NeiderhofFer, Behind the Shield, New York: Doubleday, 1967 as cited by Gary T. Marx, "Civil Disorder and the Agents of Control," Journal of Social Issues, forthcoming.

1 4 Report of the National Advisory Com- mission on Civil Disorders, N . Y . : Bantam, March, 1968, p. 7.

1 5 This kind of attitude has a long his- tory among American Negroes. During slavery, Blacks used the same rationalization to justify stealing from their masters. Ap- propriating things from the master was viewed as "taking part of his property for the benefit of another part; whereas steal- ing referred to appropriating something from another slave, an offense that was not

the society's bases of legitimacy and authority have been attacked. Law and order has long been viewed as the white man's law and order by Afro- Americans; but now this perspective characteristic of a colonized people is out in the open. And the Kerner Re- port's own data question how well ghetto rebels are buying the system: In Newark only 33 percent of self- reported rioters said they thought this country was worth fighting for in the event of a major war; in the Detroit sample the figure was 55 percent.18

One of the most significant conse- quences of the process of colonization is a weakening of the colonized's in- dividual and collective will to resist his oppression. It has been easier to contain and control Black ghettoes because communal bonds and group solidarity have been weakened through divisions among leadership, failures of organiza- tion, and a general disspiritment that ac- companies social oppression. The riots are a signal that the will to resist has broken the mold of accommodation. In some cities as in Watts they also repre- sented nascent movements toward com- munity identity. In several riot-torn ghettoes the outbursts have stimulated new organizations and movements. If it is true that the riot phenomenon of 1964-68 has passed its peak, its historical import may be more for the "internal" organizing momentum gen- erated than for any profound "exter- nal" response of the larger society facing up to underlying causes.

Despite the appeal of Frantz Fanon to young Black revolutionaries, America is not Algeria. It is difficult to foresee how riots in our cities can play a role

condoned." Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution, Vintage, 1956, p. 127.

18 Report of the National Advisory Com- mission on Civil Disorders, op. cit., p. 178.

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400 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

equivalent to rioting in the colonial situation as an integral phase in a movement for national liberation. In 1968 some militant groups (for ex- ample, the Black Panther Party in Oak- land) had concluded that ghetto riots were self-defeating of the lives and interests of Black people in the present balance of organization and gunpower, though they had served a role to stimu- late both Black consciousness and white awareness of the depths of racial crisis. Such militants have been influential in "cooling" their communities during pe- riods of high riot potential. Theoreti- cally oriented Black radicals see riots as spontaneous mass behavior which must be replaced by a revolutionary organization and consciousness. But despite the differences in objective con- ditions, the violence of the 1960's seems to serve the same psychic func- tion, assertions of dignity and man- hood for young Blacks in urban ghettoes, as it did for the colonized of North Africa described by Fanon and Memmi.1T

CULTURAL NATIONALISM

Cultural conflict is generic to the colonial relation because colonization involves the domination of Western technological values over the more communal cultures of non-Western peoples. Colonialism played havoc with the national integrity of the peoples it brought under its sway. Of course, all traditional cultures are threatened by industrialism, the city, and moderniza- tion in communication, transportation, health, and education. What is special are the political and administrative de- cisions of colonizers in managing and

17 Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, New York: Grove, 1963", Albert Memmi, The Colonizer and the Colonized, Boston: Beacon, 1967.

controlling colonized peoples. The boundaries of African colonies, for ex- ample, were drawn to suit the political conveniences of the European nations without regard to the social organiza- tion and cultures of African tribes and kingdoms. Thus Nigeria as blocked out by the British included the Yorubas and the Ibos, whose civil war today is a residuum of the colonialist's disrespect for the integrity of indigenous cultures.

The most total destruction of culture in the colonization process took place not in traditional colonialism but in America. As Frazier stressed, the in- tegral cultures of the diverse African peoples who furnished the slave trade were destroyed because slaves from dif- ferent tribes, kingdoms, and linguistic groups were purposely separated to maximize domination and control. Thus language, religion, and national loyal- ties were lost in North America much more completely than in the Caribbean and Brazil where slavery developed somewhat differently. Thus on this key point America's internal colonization has been more total and extreme than situations of classic colonialism. For the British in India and the European powers in Africa were not able—as outnumbered minorities—to destroy the national and tribal cultures of the colo- nized. Recall that American slavery lasted 250 years and its racist aftermath another 100. Colonial dependency in the case of British Kenya and French Algeria lasted only 77 and 125 years respectively. In the wake of this more drastic uprooting and destruction of culture and social organization, much more powerful agencies of social, po- litical, and psychological domination developed in the American case.

Colonial control of many peoples inhabit- ing the colonies was more a goal than a fact, and at Independence there were

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Internal Colonialism 401

undoubtedly fairly large numbers of Afri- cans who had never seen a colonial ad- ministrator. The gradual process of exten- sion of control from the administrative center on the African coast contrasts sharply with the total uprooting involved in the slave trade and the totalitarian aspects of slavery in the United States. Whether or not Elkins is correct in treat- ing slavery as a total institution, it un- doubtedly had a far more radical and pervasive impact on American slaves than did colonialism on the vast majority of Africans.18

Yet a similar cultural process unfolds in both contexts of colonialism. To the extent that they are involved in the larger society and economy, the colo- nized are caught up in a conflict be- tween two cultures. Fanon has de- scribed how the assimilation-oriented schools of Martinique taught him to reject his own culture and Blackness in favor of Westernized, French, and white values.19 Both the colonized elites under traditional colonialism and perhaps the majority of Afro-Ameri- cans today experience a parallel split in identity, cultural loyalty, and political orientation.20

The colonizers use their culture to socialize the colonized elites (intellec- tuals, politicians, and middle class) into an identification with the colonial system. Because Western culture has the prestige, the power, and the key to open the limited opportunity that a minority of the colonized may achieve, the first reaction seems to be an ac-

1 8 Robert Wood, "Colonialism in Africa and America: Some Conceptual Considera- tions," December, 1967, unpublished paper.

1 9 F. Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks, New York: Grove, 1967.

2 0 Harold Cruse has described how these two themes of integration with the larger society and identification with ethnic nation- ality have struggled within the political and cultural movements of Negro Americans. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, op. cit.

ceptance of the dominant values. Call it brainwashing as the Black Muslims put it; call it identifying with the ag- gressor if you prefer Freudian termi- nology; call it a natural response to the hope and belief that integration and democratization can really take place if you favor a more commonsense ex- planation, this initial acceptance in time crumbles on the realities of racism and colonialism. The colonized, seeing that his success within colonialism is at the expense of his group and his own inner identity, moves radically toward a rejection of the Western culture and develops a nationalist outlook that cele- brates his people and their traditions. As Memmi describes it:

Assimilation being abandoned, the colo- nized's liberation must be carried out through a recovery of self and of autono- mous dignity. Attempts at imitating the colonizer required self-denial; the colo- nizer's rejection is the indispensible pre- lude to self-discovery. That accusing and annihilating image must be shaken off; oppression must be attacked boldly since it is impossible to go around it. After having been rejected for so long by the colonizer, the day has come when it is the colonized who must refuse the colo- nizer.21

Memmi's book, The Colonizer and the Colonized, is based on his experi- ence as a Tunisian Jew in a marginal position between the French and the colonized Arab majority. The uncanny parallels between the N o r t h African situation he describes and the course of Black-white relations in our society is the best impressionist argument I know for the thesis that we have a colonized group and a colonizing system in America. His discussion of why even the most radical French anti-colonialist cannot participate in the struggle of the colonized is directly applicable to

2 1 Memmi, op. cit., p. 128.

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402 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

the situation of the white liberal and

radical vis-a-vis the Black movement.

His portrait of the colonized is as good

an analysis of the psychology behind

Black Power and Black nationalism as

anything that has been written in the

U.S. Consider for example:

Considered en bloc as them, they, or those, different from every point of view, homogeneous in a radical heterogeneity, the colonized reacts by rejecting all the colonizers en bloc. The distinction be- tween deed and intent has no great significance in the colonial situation. In the eyes of the colonized, all Europeans in the colonies are de facto colonizers, and whether they want to be or not, they are colonizers in some ways. By their privileged economic position, by belong- ing to the political system of oppression, or by participating in an effectively nega- tive complex toward the colonized, they are colonizers. . . . They are supporters or at least unconscious accomplices of that great collective aggression of Europe.2 2

The same passion which made him admire and absorb Europe shall make him assert his differences; since those differences, after all, are within him and correctly constitute his true self.23

The important thing now is to rebuild his people, whatever be their authentic na- ture; to reforge their unity, communicate with it, and to feel that they belong.2 4

C u l t u r a l r e v i t a l i z a t i o n m o v e m e n t s

p l a y a key r o l e i n a n t i - c o l o n i a l m o v e -

m e n t s . T h e y f o l l o w a n i n n e r necessity

a n d l o g i c of t h e i r o w n t h a t comes f r o m

t h e c o n s e q u e n c e s of c o l o n i a l i s m o n

g r o u p s a n d p e r s o n a l i d e n t i t i e s ; they

a r e also essential t o p r o v i d e t h e s o l i d a r -

ity w h i c h t h e p o l i t i c a l o r m i l i t a r y p h a s e

of t h e a n t i - c o l o n i a l r e v o l u t i o n r e q u i r e s .

I n t h e U . S . a n A f r o - A m e r i c a n c u l t u r e

h a s b e e n d e v e l o p i n g since slavery o u t

of t h e i n g r e d i e n t s of A f r i c a n w o r l d -

v i e w s , t h e e x p e r i e n c e of b o n d a g e ,

2 2 Ibid., p . 130. 23 Ibid., p . 132. 2 4 Ibid., p. 134.

Southern values and customs, migration

and the Northern lower-class ghettoes,

and most importantly, the political

history of the Black population in its

struggle against racism.25 That Afro-

Americans are moving toward cultural

nationalism in a period when ethnic

loyalties tend to be weak (and perhaps

on the decline) in this country is an-

other confirmation of the unique colo-

nized position of the Black group. ( A

similar nationalism seems to be grow-

ing among American Indians and

Mexican-Americans.)

T H E M O V E M E N T F O R G H E T T O

C O N T R O L

The call for Black Power unites a

number of varied movements and

tendencies.26 Though no clear-cut pro-

gram has yet emerged, the most impor-

tant emphasis seems to be the move-

ment for control of the ghetto. Black

leaders and organizations are increas-

2 5 In another essay, I argue against the standard sociological position that denies the existence of an ethnic Afro-American cul- ture and I expand on the above themes. The concept of "Soul" is astonishingly parallel in content to the mystique of "Negritude" in Africa; the Pan-African culture move- ment has its parallel in the burgeoning Black culture mood in Afro-American com- munities. See "Black Culture: Myth or Reality" in Peter Rose, editor, Americans From Africa, Atherton, 1969.

2 6 Scholars and social commentators, Black and white alike, disagree in inter- preting the contemporary Black Power movement. The issues concern whether this is a new development in Black protest or an old tendency revised; whether the movement is radical, revolutionary, reformist, or con- servative; and whether this orientation is unique to Afro-Americans or essentially a Black parallel to other ethnic group strate- gies for collective mobility. For an interest- ing discussion of Black Power as a modern- ized version of Booker T. Washington's separatism and economism, see Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution, op. cit., pp. 193-258.

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ingly concerned with owning and con- trolling those institutions that exist within or impinge upon their commun- ity. The colonial model provides a key to the understanding of this movement, and indeed ghetto control advocates have increasingly invoked the language of colonialism in pressing for local home rule. The framework of anti-col- onialism explains why the struggle for poor people's or community control of poverty programs has been more central in many cities than the content of these programs and why it has been crucial to exclude whites from leadership po- sitions in Black organizations.

The key institutions that anti-colo- nialists want to take over or control are business, social services, schools, and the police. Though many spokes- men have advocated the exclusion of white landlords and small businessmen from the ghetto, this program has evi- dently not struck fire with the Black population and little concrete move- ment toward economic expropriation has yet developed. Welfare recipients have organized in many cities to pro- tect their rights and gain a greater voice in the decisions that affect them, but whole communities have not yet been able to mount direct action against welfare colonialism. Thus schools and the police seem now to be the burning issues of ghetto control politics.

During the past few years there has been a dramatic shift from educational integration as the primary goal to that of community control of the schools. Afro-Americans are demanding their own school boards, with the power to hire and fire principals and teachers and to construct a curriculum which would be relevant to the special needs and culture style of ghetto youth. Especially active in high schools and colleges have been Black students,

whose protests have centered on the incorporation of Black Power and Black culture into the educational system. Consider how similar is the spirit be- hind these developments to the attitude of the colonized North African toward European education:

He will prefer a long period of educa- tional mistakes to the continuance of the colonizer's school organization. He will choose institutional disorder in order to destroy the institutions built by the colo- nizer as soon as possible. There we will see, indeed a reactive drive of profound protest. He will no longer owe anything to the colonizer and will have definitely broken with him.27

Protest and institutional disorder over the issue of school control came to a head in 1968 in New York City. The procrastination in the Albany State legislature, the several crippling strikes called by the teachers union, and the almost frenzied response of Jewish or- ganizations makes it clear that decolo- nization of education faces the resis- tance of powerful vested interests.28

The situation is too dynamic at present to assess probable future results. How- ever, it can be safely predicted that some form of school decentralization will be institutionalized in New York, and the movement for community con- trol of education will spread to more cities.

This movement reflects some of the problems and ambiguities that stem from the situation of colonization out- side an immediate colonial context. The Afro-American community is not parallel in structure to the communities of colonized nations under traditional

2 7 Memmi, op. eit., pp. 137-138. 2 8 For the New York school conflict see

Jason Epstein, "The Politics of School De- centralization," New York Review of Books, June 6, 1968, pp. 26-32; and "The New York City School Revolt," ibid,, 11, no. 6, pp. 37-41.

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404 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

colonialism. The significant difference here is the lack of fully developed in- digenous institutions besides the church. Outside of some areas of the South there is really no Black economy, and most Afro-Americans are inevitably caught up in the larger society's struc- ture of occupations, education, and mass communication. Thus the ethnic nationalist orientation which reflects the reality of colonization exists along- side an integrationist orientation which corresponds to the reality that the in- stitutions of the larger society are much more developed than those of the in- cipient nation.29 As would be expected the movement for school control reflects both tendencies. The militant leaders who spearhead such local movements may be primarily motivated by the desire to gain control over the commun- ity's institutions—they are anti-colo- nialists first and foremost. Many par- ents who support them may share this goal also, but the majority are prob- ably more concerned about creating a new education that will enable their children to "make it" in the society and the economy as a whole—they know that the present school system fails ghetto children and does not pre- pare them for participation in Ameri- can life.

There is a growing recognition that the police are the most crucial institu- tion maintaining the colonized status of Black Americans. And of all estab- lishment institutions, police depart- ments probably include the highest pro-

2 9 This dual split in the politics and psyche of the Black American was poetically described by Du Bois in his Souls of Black Folk, and more recently has been insight- fully analyzed by Harold Cruse in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, op. cit. Cruse has also characterized the problem of the Black community as that of under- development.

portion of individual racists. This is no accident since central to the workings of racism (an essential component of colonization) are attacks on the hu- manity and dignity of the subject group. Through their normal routines the police constrict Afro-Americans to Black neighborhoods by harassing and questioning them when found outside the ghetto; they break up groups of youth congregating on corners or in cars without any provocation; and they continue to use offensive and racist language no matter how many inter- group understanding seminars have been built into the police academy. They also shoot to kill ghetto residents for alleged crimes such as car thefts and running from police officers.30

Police are key agents in the power equation as well as the drama of dehu- manization. In the final analysis they do the dirty work for the larger system by restricting the striking back of Black rebels to skirmishes inside the ghetto, thus deflecting energies and attacks from the communities and institutions

3 0 A recent survey of police finds "that in the predominantly Negro areas of several large cities, many of the police perceive the residents as basically hostile, especially the youth and adolescents. A lack of public support—from citizens, from courts, and from laws—is the policeman's major com- plaint. But some of the public criticism can be traced to the activities in which he en- gages day by day, and perhaps to the tone in which he enforces the "law" in the Negro neighborhoods. Most frequently he is 'called upon' to intervene in domestic quarrels and break up loitering groups. He stops and frisks two or three times as many people as are carrying dangerous weapons or are actual criminals, and almost half of these don't wish to cooperate with the policeman's efforts." Peter Rossi et ah, "Be- tween Black and White—The Faces of American Institutions and the Ghetto," in Supplemental Studies for The National Ad- visory Commission on Civil Disorders, July 1968, p . 114.

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of the larger power structure. In a his- torical review, Gary Marx notes that since the French revolution, police and other authorities have killed large num- bers of demonstrators and rioters; the rebellious "rabble" rarely destroys hu- man life. The same pattern has been repeated in America's recent revolts.31

Journalistic accounts appearing in the press recently suggest that police see themselves as defending the interests of white people against a tide of Black insurgence; furthermore the majority of whites appear to view "blue power" in this light. There is probably no other opinion on which the races are as far apart today as they are on the question of attitudes toward the police.

In many cases set off by a confronta- tion between a policeman and a Black citizen, the ghetto uprisings have dramatized the role of law enforce- ment and the issue of police brutality. In their aftermath, movements have arisen to contain police activity. One of the first was the Community Alert Patrol in Los Angeles, a method of policing the police in order to keep them honest and constrain their viola- tions of personal dignity. This was the first tactic of the Black Panther Party which originated in Oakland, perhaps

8 1 "In the Gordon Riots of 1780 demon- strators destroyed property and freed pris- oners, but did not seem to kill anyone, while authorities killed several hundred rioters and hung an additional 25. In the Rebellion Riots of the French Revolution, though several hundred rioters were killed, they killed no one. Up to the end of the Summer of 1967, this pattern had clearly been re- peated, as police, not rioters, were respon- sible for most of the more than 100 deaths that have occurred. Similarly, in a related context, the more than 100 civil rights murders of recent years have been matched by almost no murders of racist whites." G. Marx, "Civil Disorders and the Agents of Social Control," op. cit.

the most significant group to challenge the police role in maintaining the ghetto as a colony. The Panther's later policy of openly carrying guns (a legally protected right) and their in- tention of defending themselves against police aggression has brought on a se- ries of confrontations with the Oakland police department. All indications are that the authorities intend to destroy the Panthers by shooting, framing up, or legally harassing their leadership— diverting the group's energies away from its primary purpose of self-de- fense and organization of the Black community to that of legal defense and gaining support in the white commun- icy.

There are three major approaches to "police colonialism" that correspond to reformist and revolutionary readings of the situation. The most elementary and also superficial sees colonialism in the fact that ghettoes are overwhelmingly patrolled by white rather than by Black officers. The proposal—supported to- day by many police departments—to increase the number of Blacks on local forces to something like their distribu- tion in the city would then make it possible to reduce the use of white cops in the ghetto. This reform should be supported, for a variety of obvious reasons, but it does not get to the heart of the police role as agents of coloniza- tion.

The Kerner Report documents the fact that in some cases Black policemen can be as brutal as their white counter- parts. The Report does not tell us who polices the ghetto, but they have com- piled the proportion of Negroes on the forces of the major cities. In some cities the disparity is so striking that white police inevitably dominate ghetto pa- trols. (In Oakland 31 percent of the population and only 4 percent of the

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406 SOCIAL PROBLEMS

police are Black; in Detroit the figures are 39 percent and 5 percent; and in New Orleans 41 and 4.) In other cities, however, the proportion of Black cops is approaching the distribution in the city: Philadelphia 29 percent and 20 percent; Chicago 27 percent and 17 percent.32 These figures also suggest that both the extent and the pattern of colonization may vary from one city to another. It would be useful to study how Black communities differ in de- gree of control over internal institu- tions as well as in economic and politi- cal power in the metropolitan area.

A second demand which gets more to the issue is that police should live in the communities they patrol. The idea here is that Black cops who lived in the ghetto would have to be account- able to the community; if they came on like white cops then "the brothers would take care of business" and make their lives miserable. The third or max- imalist position is based on the premise that the police play no positive role in the ghettoes. It calls for the withdrawal of metropolitan officers from Black communities and the substitution of an autonomous indigenous force that would maintain order without oppres- sing the population. The precise rela- tionship between such an independent police, the city and county law enforce- ment agencies, a ghetto governing body that would supervise and finance it, and

3 2 Report of the National Advisory Com- mission on Civil Disorders, op. tit., p. 321. That Black officers nevertheless would make a difference is suggested by data from one of the supplemental studies to the Kerner Report. They found Negro policemen work- ing in the ghettoes considerably more sym- pathetic to the community and its social problems than their white counterparts. Peter Rossi et al., "Between Black and White— The Faces of American Institutions in the Ghetto," op. tit., chap. 6.

especially the law itself is yet unclear. It is unlikely that we will soon face these problems directly as they have arisen in the case of New York's schools. Of all the programs of decolo- nization, police autonomy will be most resisted. It gets to the heart of how the state functions to control and contain the Black community through delegat- ing the legitimate use of violence to police authority.

The various "Black Power" programs that are aimed at gaining control of individual ghettoes—buying up prop- erty and businesses, running the schools through community boards, taking over anti-poverty programs and other social agencies, diminishing the arbitrary power of the police—can serve to re- vitalize the institutions of the ghetto and build up an economic, professional, and political power base. These pro- grams seem limited; we do not know at present if they are enough in them- selves to end colonized status.33 But they are certainly a necessary first step.

T H E ROLE OF WHITES

What makes the Kerner Report a less-than-radical document is its super- ficial treatment of racism and its reluc- tance to confront the colonized rela- tionship between Black people and the larger society. The Report emphasizes the attitudes and feelings that make up white racism, rather than the system of privilege and control which is the heart of the matter.34 With all its discussion

3 3 Eldridge Cleaver has called this first stage of the anti-colonial movement com- munity liberation in contrast to a more long-range goal of national liberation. E. Cleaver, "Community Imperialism," Black Panther Party newspaper, 2 (May 18, 1968).

3 4 For a discussion of this failure to deal with racism, see Gary T. Marx, "Report of the National Commission: The Analysis of

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Internal Colonialism 407

of the ghetto and its problems, it never faces the question of the stake that white Americans have in racism and ghettoization.

This is not a simple question, but this paper should not end with the impression that police are the major villains. All white Americans gain some privileges and advantage from the colonization of Black communi- ties.85 The majority of whites also lose something from this oppression and division in society. Serious research should be directed to the ways in which white individuals and institu- tions are tied into the ghetto. In closing let me suggest some possible param- eters.

1. It is my guess that only a small minority of whites make a direct eco- nomic profit from ghetto colonization. This is hopeful in that the ouster of white businessmen may become politi- cally feasible. Much more significant, however, are the private and corporate interests in the land and residential property of the Black community; their holdings and influence on urban de- cision-making must be exposed and combated.

2. A much larger minority have oc- cupational and professional interests in the present arrangements. The Kerner Commission reports that 1.3 million non-white men would have to be up- graded occupationally in order to make the Black job distribution roughly simi- lar to the white. They advocate this without mentioning that 1.3 million specially privileged white workers

Disorder or Disorderly Analysis," 1968, unpublished paper.

88 Such a statement is easier to assert than to document but I am attempting the latter in a forthcoming book tentatively titled White Racism, Black Culture, to be published by Little Brown, 1970.

would lose in the bargain.36 In addi- tion there are those professionals who carry out what Lee Rainwater has called the "dirty work" of administering the lives of the ghetto poor: the social workers, the school teachers, the urban development people, and of course the police.37 The social problems of the Black community will ultimately be solved only by people and organizations from that community; thus the empha- sis within these professions must shift toward training such a cadre of minor- ity personnel. Social scientists who teach and study problems of race and poverty likewise have an obligation to replace themselves by bringing into the graduate schools and college faculties men of color who will become the fu- ture experts in these areas. For cultural and intellectual imperialism is as real as welfare colonialism, though it is currently screened behind such unassail- able shibboleths as universalism and the objectivity of scientific inquiry.

3. Without downgrading the vested interests of profit and profession, the real nitty-gritty elements of the white stake are political power and bureau- cratic security. Whereas few whites have much understanding of the reali- ties of race relations and ghetto life, I think most give tacit or at least sub- conscious support for the containment and control of the Black population. Whereas most whites have extremely distorted images of Black Power, many —if not most—would still be fright- ened by actual Black political power. Racial groups and identities are real in American life; white Americans sense

3 6 Report of the National Advisory Com- mission on Civil Disorders, op. cit., pp. 253- 256.

3 7 Lee Rainwater, "The Revolt of the Dirty-Workers," Trans-action, 5 (Nov., 1967), pp. 2, 64.

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they are on top, and they fear possible reprisals or disruptions were power to be more equalized. There seems to be a paranoid fear in the white psyche of Black dominance; the belief that Black autonomy would mean unbridled li- cense is so ingrained that such reason- able outcomes as Black political ma- jorities and independent Black police forces will be bitterly resisted.

On this level the major mass bul- wark of colonization is the administra- tive need for bureaucratic security so that the middle classes can go about their life and business in peace and quiet. The Black militant movement is a threat to the orderly procedures by which bureaucracies and suburbs man- age their existence, and I think today there are more people who feel a stake in conventional procedures than there are those who gain directly from racism. For in their fight for institu- tional control, the colonized will not play by the white rules of the game. These administrative rules have kept them down and out of the system; therefore they have no necessary inten- tion of running institutions in the image of the white middle class.

The liberal, humanist value that violence is the worst sin cannot be de- fended today if one is committed squarely against racism and for self- determination. For some violence is

almost inevitable in the decolonization process; unfortunately racism in Amer- ica has been so effective that the great- est power Afro-Americans (and per- haps also Mexican-Americans) wield today is the power to disrupt. If we are going to swing with these revolu- tionary times and at least respond posi- tively to the anti-colonial movement, we will have to learn to live with conflict, confrontation, constant change, and what may be real or apparent chaos and disorder.

A positive response from the white majority needs to be in two major di- rections at the same time. First, com- munity liberation movements should be supported in every way by pulling out white instruments of direct control and exploitation and substituting technical assistance to the community when this is asked for. But it is not enough to relate affirmatively to the nationalist movement for ghetto control without at the same time radically opening doors for full participation in the in- stitutions of the mainstream. Other- wise the liberal and radical position is little different than the traditional seg- regationist. Freedom in the special con- ditions of American colonization means that the colonized must have the choice between participation in the larger so- ciety and in their own independent structures.

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