*-THIS IS A FOOTNOTE HERE I WILL OPEN AS SOON AS I CAN. THIS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE ON THE WEBSITE.to take account of the years of indoctrination starting from the first encounter of the white colonists with black tribesmen, when whites were set up as a standard. From their capitalistic tendencies one has come to measure status by the amount of money one has. In this way the class situation was introduced as a value even for blacks. The urgency of the moment is that we have to liberate the mind of the black man.
Black Consciousness can therefore be seen as a stage preceding any invasion, any abolition of the ego by desire: The first step, therefore, is to make the black man see himself, to pump life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by inward-looking process. This makes consciousness, Black Consciousness, imminent in our own eyes. "I am not a potentiality of something," writes Fanon.* "I am wholly what I am. I do not have to look for the universal. No probability has any place inside me. My negro consciousness does not hold itself out as black. It IS. It is its own follower. This is all that we blacks are after. TO BE. We believe that we are quite efficient in handling our BEness and for this purpose we are self-sufficient. We shall never find our goals and aspirations as a people centered anywhere else but in US. This, therefore, necessitates a self-examination and a rediscovery of ourselves. Blacks can no longer afford to be led and dominated by nonblacks."
I do not believe that there was nothing of value* in the way of life of the indigenous black peoples. The tribe was seen as an extension of the family and all collective enterprise was geared to the general good. The chief was merely a custodian of the property of the tribe. There cannot be a better collective system of government. Blacks must reject the exploitative nature of white society. The norms of Western society are, by definition, norms required by the capitalist for its survival. Thus exploitation, which is natural in Western culture, will never willingly be renounced
(copyright 1978 by Donald Woods)
*-THIS IS A FOOTNOTE HERE I WILL OPEN AS SOON AS I CAN. THIS IS POSSIBLY THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE ON THE WEBSITE.