20B
ABBIE HOFFMAN
develop into racism. The record should be clear that racism has as
its object the subjugation of another group. This is
not
what Black
Power seeks.
Finally, Duberman's article indicates that much of the Black Power
rhetoric is reminiscent of laissez faire conservatism (Herbert Hoover or
Booker T. Washington ) with its emphasis on self-reliance and seIf–
worth. This is not entirely incorrect. What we see
in
much of the Black
Power position is a combination of a little of Booker T. Washington
(self-help and cast down your buckets where you are) and a lot of
W. E. B. DuBois (militant insistence on equal rights and the development
of a Talented Tenth). Anyone who has worked with the black students'
organizations growing throughout the country on college campuses wm
see this. Many whites understand this, but the shocking thing, I suspect,
is that black people are beginning to adopt this approach - and are
certainly beginning to be less concerned about what their good white
friends write in articles in sophisticated journals.
The ultimate test will not be what we
say
in such journals, but what
we
do
in
our respective communities.
Abbie Hoffman
"Black Power!" yells the seventeen-year-old as he kicks in
the store window in Newark and grabs the TV set.
"Black Power!" says the chairman of Negroes for Wallace in Los
Angeles.
"Black Power!" shouts Stokely, the international revolutionist.
"Black Power!" states a Negro slumlord in Harlem.
"Black Power!" explains a black craftsman in a self-help cooperative
In
McComb, Mississippi.
Black Power to me, as a young white radical, has no real meaning.
The question should be directed to blacks. I am busy making my own
revolution. I am busy building a new community. Within a year we
have a society of our own, newspapers, stimulants, thought patterns, life
styles, dress, religion, politics, language, family relationships, music and
art. Some call us hippies, yippies, dropouts, runaways, free men, flower
children. The name doesn't matter. We are here to stay. We have our
own civil war.
If
you are under eighteen in this country you literally are in
bondage. In the Lower East Side and the Haight-Ashbury professional
bounty hunters get a hundred dollars per runaway slave they return.
The police bust crash-pads without search warrants, which are unneces-
