What is Black Nationalism?
Black nationalism is the view that Black people, especially in the United States, form their own people and should run their own affairs. Its supporters say that asking for a place inside white-controlled institutions has not ended racism. They want Black-owned businesses, Black-run schools and Black political power. Some also want a separate territory or a return to Africa. The movement is linked to Pan-Africanism, which looks at the whole African world, while Black nationalism usually focuses on one country. It has religious, cultural and Marxist forms.
Core beliefs
- People of African descent are a nation with a right to decide their own future.
- Black communities should own and run their own schools, businesses and local government.
- Knowing and honoring African history builds strength and self-respect.
- Equal rights on paper do not end racism without real power.
- Self-defense against racist violence is legitimate.
- Some supporters want a separate state or emigration, while others stay within existing countries.
History
Free Black writers in the 1800s, such as Martin Delany, argued for a Black nation after seeing how the United States treated them. In 1914 Marcus Garvey, from Jamaica, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which grew into a mass movement with millions of claimed members in the 1920s. Garvey was jailed for mail fraud in 1925 and deported in 1927. The Nation of Islam started in Detroit in 1930 and grew under Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm X rose as its best known voice and left in 1964. He was shot dead in 1965. In 1966 Stokely Carmichael pushed the call for Black Power, and the Black Panther Party began in Oakland the same year.
Variants
Separatists and emigrationists want their own land. Religious nationalists, like the Nation of Islam, tie the cause to faith. Cultural nationalists focus on art, names, dress and African roots. Revolutionary nationalists, such as the early Panthers, joined the cause to socialism and opposition to empire. Economic nationalists focus on Black banks, firms and cooperatives. These strands often disagreed with each other, sometimes bitterly.
Criticisms
Civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. held that the aim was full and equal citizenship in a shared country, and that separation would give up that fight. The Nation of Islam in particular was widely criticized for teaching that white people were evil and for antisemitic statements. Marxists argued that class, not race, is the main divide, and the Panthers themselves moved toward this view later. Some critics say that plans for a separate state were never practical. Supporters answer that such ideas came from real exclusion, and that self-reliance was a sensible response to it.
In practice
Black nationalists founded newspapers, schools, mosques, stores and community programs, including the Panthers' free breakfasts for children. Federal agencies, notably the FBI through its COINTELPRO operation, spied on and disrupted many such groups. Shootings, jail terms and splits weakened the movement by the mid 1970s. Its ideas about Black studies, community control and cultural pride lasted. On the 12 axes it scores strongly toward National identity on Culture, and leans Central on Structure, with the economic axes near the middle.