The Cold Hard Truth About White Radicals and the Black Panther Party

by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

Contrary to what they claim today, I know many white radicals in the old Left hated the Black Panther Party in the 1960’s. They hated the idea of Black people fighting for their own liberation, without white radical leadership. They hated the idea that the BPP was able to recruit thousands of Black poor and working class youth. They hated the idea that the Black Panther newspaper was the central radical publication of the day, and could explain complex terms to urban Black people that made them “get it”, more than the 1960’s white radical and “underground” press. They hated the idea that the Black Panther Party as an autonomous movement inspired other ethnic and racial groups to organize similar groups, and even young whites whom they had hoped to recruit to their tired ass programs. They hated the idea that the BPP had put forth a socialist program that put oppressed Black/POC at the center of revolutionary social change in the USA and the world. They hated them then, and they hate them now, but today they pretend that they were their best friends of the BPP, and that they are creating programs “just like” the BPP, and that Black people just oughta join with them.

The problem with haters, and racism inside the Left itself, is that they want Black people to go against their own self-interests by surrendering to middle class white radicals, when only they can begin the process of securing their own liberation. Black/POC radicals can only join with others when there are shared issues of concern on a class basis, or there is shared sacrifice, but even then, we need to have our own autonomous movement to make sure our issues are not only respected, but given priority, by any movement claiming to be fighting for a new socialist society.

“Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.”

—

assata shakur

Assata: An Autobiography (1987)

“The social philosophy of black nationalism only means that we have to get together and remove the evils, the vices, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other evils that are destroying the moral fiber of our community. We our selves have to lift the level of our community, the standard of our community to a higher level, make our own society beautiful so that we will be satisfied in our own social circles and won’t be running around here trying to knock our way into a social circle where we’re not wanted. So I say, in spreading a gospel such as black nationalism, it is not designed to make the black man re-evaluate the white man — you know him already — but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don’t change the white man’s mind — you can’t change his mind, and that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America — America’s conscience is bankrupt. She lost all conscience a long time ago. Uncle Sam has no conscience.”

—Malcolm X, the bullet or the ballot

“I find it really interesting that the FBI decided to focus quite specifically on black women [under the COINTELPRO program], because somehow they feared, it seems to me, that the movement would continue to grow and develop, particularly with the leadership and the involvement of black women. I was rendered a target, an ideological target, in the same way that Assata Shakur was called the 'mother hen' of the Black Liberation Army. The way in which she was represented became an invitation for racists and everyone who assented to the repressive behavior of the US government to focus very specifically on her, to focus their hate, to focus vedettas on her. And I really find it surprising that when the grandchildren of those who were active in the late '60s and early '70s are becoming involved in similar movements today, there is this effort again to terrorize young people by representing such an important figure as Assata Shakur as a terrorist. And let me say that I was quite surprised that in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, where before the Tzarnev brothers were discovered to be the alleged perpetrators, there was an attempt to represent the person who planted the bombs as either a black man or a dark-skinned man, with a hoodie I believe. This racialization of what is represented as terrorism is an attempt to bring the old-style racism into conversation with modes of repression in the 21st century.”

—Angela Davis, on the May 3, 2013 Democracy Now program: Angela Davis and Assata Shakur’s Lawyer Denounce FBI’s Adding of Exiled Activist to Terrorists List [48:14]