History of Black Nationalism Essay

Abstract

Black Nationalism puts its basis on only the blacks rather than supporting multiculturalism. Black Nationalism promoted race pride for Africans Americans, black independence and economic self-reliance. The black nationalists disapproved of the technique of Martin Luther King Junior in the 1960s.

African American leaders advocated for the evacuation of blacks to Africa. Here they would stay and help the local Africans in building their nation. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican settler in the United States greatly prejudiced Black Nationalism in the twentieth century. In Black Nationalism, there is a fervent and blazing hatred for the white.

It aimed at separating all the black cities to the north. Black Nationalism comprises of those who preferred self-effacing objectives like black management of both private and public institutions. This brought about the slogan of ‘Black Power’.

Meaning and History of Black Nationalism

Free blacks felt that political sovereignty was required in the creation of a self-governing state advocated for Black Nationalism in the United States. Before the 1850s, support for this idea was minimal. The Fugitive Slave Act approved power to compel the general public recapture slaves.

In this era, in the US, political elites according to the white nationalist terms defined citizenship (Fanon 16). It had been declared that the it was not necessary for the white man to respect the African race.

Before the civil war, the rights of the free blacks concerning the movement to different states and intermarriage were barred. Some campaigned that the free blacks should depart the United States and move to Canada and other destinations.

Black Nationalism in the US is the desire of Black Americans to have a say and control their life and political organizations. In addition to this, preserve their social, economic and cultural organizations. It has existed for long in the United States and remains a force to reckon in the black society. The existence of Black Nationalism has mostly been evident among black male, other than black female.

The black movement was instituted in the year 1918. It originated in New York and developed because of the political, social and economic skills of the native blacks of that time. It concentrated on developments that were unique in that era.

The black movement passed a message of thinking about the racial identity and the empowerment of the free blacks in the United States. Like Fanon, in his book ‘the wretched of the earth’, the black movement argued for racial purity. It fought racial identity, which despised multiplicity in the midst of black people (Fanon 45).

After the twentieth century, social issues like religious beliefs and racial purity have been disagreed upon. Differences in terms of black equality under capitalism have also arisen. Nationalists believed that deliverance was attached to the recuperation of the African identity.

The Black power movement in the US came because many members were against the peaceful advances to tackling disparity and racism. According to Fanon, in his book ‘The Wretched of The Earth’, violence was not the way to solve the problem of Black Nationalism in the US (96).

Racists felt that the use of violence against the black people in the US was the only option since they had not succeeded in securing enough dispensation for black people.

Impact of Black Nationalism

Black Nationalism helped the free blacks systematize organizations and self-help groups that were self-dependant. This encouraged the self-esteem and racial pride of the free blacks.

Because of the black movements, black politics emerged indirectly and directly. The messages delivered by the black power movement enhanced the political bargains of the activists. They advanced to politics with more confidence and creativity.

The subordination and isolation of the African American are some of the conditions that have led to the persistence of Back Nationalism in the United States (Fanon 2004). Although there is little evidence, many Americans anticipate that a colour-blind society will one day develop in the United States.

Violence and Colonization

Colonialism is only made possible by the use of severe violence and pressure. According to Fanon, violence is the only language that colonizers understand. Colonization is created by two incompatible societies, one to be colonized and the colonizer. The colonizers have to use force and violence to take and oppress the one being colonized.

The method of violence and the identity of the colonizer and the one to be colonized vary but the presence of violence is constant. Fanon feels that violence is a necessary aspect in politics. Fanon has witnessed colonial violence and feels the abusive social environment of the colonized causes psychological disorders.

In his book, ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ Fanon calls for an improved radical action against the colonizers. He categorizes violence in terms of physical acts and injuries. He feels that violence is the only way to create new possibilities.

“We should flatly refuse the situation to which the Western countries wish to condemn us. Colonialism and imperialism have not paid their score when they withdraw their flags and their police forces from our territories.

For centuries, the capitalists have behaved in the underdeveloped world like nothing more than war criminals. Deportations, massacres, forced labor, and slavery have been the main methods used by capitalism to increase its wealth, its gold or diamond reserves, and to establish its power” (Fanon 101).

Fanon feels that moral reasoning for continued violence is that it is simply a natural reaction to the violence spread by the colonizers and it reinstates civilization to the threatened native. Similarly, he feels violence can disrupt and conquer colonial infrastructure and institute harmony in the struggle for sovereignty.

Eventually, in Fanons view, any incapacity to colonial aggression rationalizes the violent annihilation of the colonist. “The judgment of colonialism ‘is violent in its natural state, and will only yield when confronted with greater violence’, making subsequent violence inevitable” (Fanon 48).

Fanon depicts rebellion as the opportunity to future independence, and it takes place during the process of decolonization. Decolonization is the process of liberating a country from colonial law or freeing the residents from intellectual control and estrangement brought about by colonialism (Social Philosophy).

“Decolonization unifies that people by the radical decision to remove from it its heterogeneity, and by unifying it on a national, sometimes racial, basis” (Fanon 46).

Triumphant decolonization is categorized by absolute replacement of one group of men by another, beginning of a new world order with a new language and intellect of humankind, and the institution of a new world order solely by the newly open-minded people, devoid of outside help.

The stages, which make this possible, necessitate the colonized to look for a complete rationalization of the colonial organization of the society (Social Philosophy).

State of Consciousness

Although sovereignty has since been granted to Africa, it remains a fatality in a post-colonial context. The continent still suffers from disastrous divergence like the ones caused by its European colonizers before the pre-independence days, provoked by need for control and possessions. “Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.

The wealth which smothers her is that which was stolen from the underdeveloped peoples” (Fanon 102). Aggression thrives in the appearance of civil wars, rebellion and state viciousness as seen in the Congo and Nigeria in the 1960’s, in Rwanda during the 1990’s, and in Kenya, Chad and Sudan in the twenty first century.

The reimbursements of sovereignty are overshadowed by a powerful, central guidance, which uses influential misinformation to supplement their political errant, which frequently have brutal complications. Without doubt, Fanon would advance to the condition of contemporary day Africa as he did with colonized Algeria.

The extent to which neo-colonial rule and colonial rule in Africa relate to each other proposes a secure link between aggression and the nature of leadership in administration. It also advocates an opportunity of continuous hostility if the current structure of power does not move away from its neo-colonial system.

Americans do not comprehend how greatly the programme following the ‘war on terror’ was established on a false supposition of accountability to extend democracy and protect U.S. nationalism.

Thus in the progression, the U.S. has applied many plans that resonate those used by the Nazi rule: immediate alteration to militant situations, arrest of terrorist suspects in state torment amenities, and dispossession of one embattled group of people on basis of race, class, or belief.

Validation for violence is wrong since they frequently change during the course of a conflict. When these show false, the incursion became a matter of spreading democracy, but others have are liable for the attack. As the situation oversees began to change, so did the rationalizations for U.S. occupation.

Work Cited

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth, New York: Groove Press, 2004, Print