VICTIMIZATION vs. EMPOWERMENT:
Civil Rights, Black Nationalism, and Equality

What does it mean to be a victim compared to being empowered? Can victimization evolve into empowerment? This most certainly can occur, particularly when individuals who are relegated to a minority status such as being a woman or being Black is factored into the equation. And as we know, race and gender are two of the first characteristics individuals observe when engaging in social interactions. To streamline this column regarding victimization versus empowerment, we will discuss these two concepts within the context of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. A previous column discussed the Birth of a Nation and how there have been numerous federal, state, and local legislations that have structured the life chances of individuals based on racial classification and gender. These legislations include the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments, Reconstruction, the New Deal, and the Jim Crow Laws.

While much progress has been accomplished since the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education, school desegregation case in 1954, many individuals question the progress that has been made. For example, schools and neighborhoods are more segregated now than in the 1950s. In fact, only 5% of American schools are racially integrated; racially integrated simply means that the student population is proportional to the national population. Schools are highly segregated by race and class. Furthermore, a recent Supreme Court decision outlawed race being used as an indicator for school placement. Thus, the racial segregation that we currently see will likely continue to persist and possibly worsen unless legislative change on a federal, state, and local level ensues.

Regarding legislation, individuals often ask a fundamental question, why can't individuals have the same rights with the same clause, instead of separate clauses that imply the same rights? This is even more significant in the United States, compared to other countries, because the United States prides itself on allowing states to construct and regulate their own laws and citizens. A few examples are worthy of consideration here. First, although the XIII Amendment freed Black slaves, many Blacks stayed enslaved for years after 1864. Second, although the Brown vs. Board of Education case made integration mandatory, many states were not fully integrated until the early 1980s. Lastly, although the XV Amendment provided voting rights to Blacks, they did not obtain the right to vote until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because state legislation prevented many Blacks from voting. Taken together, separate clauses that imply the same rights are not equal rights at all. Furthermore, these examples highlight states ability to undermine federal legislation.

These types of incidents often lead to individuals, specifically Blacks, experiencing unjust treatment and relative deprivation. Often, two reactions occur following these types of incidents—victimization and empowerment. Victimization is the act of being cheated and/or defrauded of money, property, or self-worth. It generally refers to any person, group, or entity who has suffered injury or loss due to illegal activity. Empowerment, on the other hand, is to be invested with the power and ability to take action, usually legally through official authority. The term empowerment became popular during the Women’s Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Empowerment is often portrayed as threatening whereas victimization is non-threatening. While a victim can be felt sorry for and perceived as weak, an empowered individual is normally powerful, agentic, action-oriented, and often organized. Two examples can be highlighted here.



First, I collect t-shirts that have social, racial, and/or political messages, statements, and/or images on them. While intuitively it would seem a shirt that displays images such as “Strange Fruit”—Blacks hanging from trees with their bloody, beaten, and/or burned bodies personifying fruit—would elicit electrifying and gasping responses, most individuals respond with a simple, “It is a shame what happen to your people.” Comparatively, a shirt with a statement such as, “Black by Nature, Proud by Choice,” often elicits disgruntled facial expressions and/or acts of avoidance.

A bit more should be said about “Strange Fruit” before moving on. “Strange Fruit” became a famous phrase based on a song by Billie Holiday entitled, “Strange Fruit,” which condemns racism and discrimination by drawing attention to the lynching of Blacks. The song was actually a poem written by Abel Meeropol, who was a Jewish school teacher from New York. Abel was appalled by a photo he saw of the lynching of two Black men in Marion, IN.



A second example to discuss victimization and empowerment is hip hop music. In terms of public perception and the type of hip hop music that often hits sound scans, the radio, and the television, hip hop as a musical genre has collectively moved from Black empowerment to being socially consciousness to currently being more so about economic empowerment. While much can be said about hip hop as a whole, we will save that topic for another column (see Hip Hop as a Cause of an Effect under EngageChat). Instead I draw attention to the fact that when hip hop songs discuss the reaction to the woes of society or the unequal treatment of minorities in housing, employment, and education, which includes drugs and other forms of victimized type of responses, they are allowed to speak “freely.” In contrast, hip hop songs that are more about empowerment, uplift, and collective acts of resistance seem to have a harder time reaching mainstream media outlets. How many of you have heard of Dead Prez, Lupe Fiasco, Little Brother, and/or knew that Public Enemy had a new album recently entitled, Third World Order? With Flava Flav’s success on Flava of Love, it would seem that Public Enemy’s album would be marketed in a more mainstream manner. Unfortunately, it is not. Because Public Enemy as a group is perceived as empowered, the group does not receive the notoriety it deserves. Instead, Flava Flav is free to make a minstrel and a mockery of Black relationships and Black love. And we all watch it and laugh.

Now, we move to discussing a specific form of empowerment—Black Power. The concept of Black Power rests on a fundamental premise: Before a group can enter the open society, it must first close ranks. Black Power means that group solidarity is necessary before a group can operate effectively from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic society. Originating from the lectures of Malcolm X, the concept of Black Power is a call for Blacks to unite, recognize their heritage, and build a sense of community. Black Power calls for Blacks to begin to define their own goals, lead their own organizations, and support those organizations. It is a call to reject the racialized institutions and values of society which are accepted as normal and true.

In October of 1966 in Oakland California, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. The Black Panthers practiced militant self-defense of minority communities against the U.S. government and fought to establish revolutionary socialism through mass organizing and community-based programs. The party was one of the first organizations in U.S. history to militantly struggle for ethnic minority and working class emancipation. The Black Panther Party’s agenda was the revolutionary establishment of real economic, social, and political equality across racial/ethnic and gender divides.



The practices of the late Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm X had represented both a militant revolutionary, with the dignity and self-respect to stand up and fight to win equality for all oppressed minorities, and a role model, someone who sought to bring about positive social change. The Black Panthers aimed to take this philosophy to new heights. Stemming from Malcolm X’s belief of international working class unity, The Black Panthers united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from a Marxism perspective they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism, and represented the need for all workers to forcefully dictate the means of production. Accordingly, the Black Panthers Ten Point Program shows that they were for equality for all and not just for Blacks.

While current public opinion would have you to believe that Martin Luther King, Jr. was all about nonviolence and Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers were all about separatism and violence, this is not exactly correct. In fact, there are many similarities and few differences regarding the goals of their works. This is a grave misunderstand of the influential entities of the Black Power Movement. Let us also remember that Martin Luther King, Jr. was portrayed as anti-American, militant, and radical during the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the more notable works, which EngageDiversity highly recommend you read, include King’s Letters from a Birmingham Jail, Malcolm X’s The Ballot or the Bullet, Black Panther Party’s What We Want, Angela Davis’s Political Prisoners, Prisons, and Black Liberation, and The National Black Political Convention’s The Gary Declaration. The Gary Declaration is particularly significant because despite what some may think, Blacks were extremely mobilized in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The most influential Blacks came traveled to Gary, Indiana in 1903 to formulate a declaration of independence for Blacks. The Black Panther’s What We Want was an addendum of sorts to the Gary Declaration. You will see many similarities between these two works. Angela Davis, who is currently a Professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz, was an influential member during the Black Power Movement. Her story is unique in its own right and we encourage you to read about this strong, powerful, and vindicated woman.



All of these works can be found at www.historyisaweapon.com. We thank Thomas James for bringing this website to our attention. Discussing Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, I will highlight a few themes that develop throughout their works including morality vs. legality, human rights, and activism. Martin Luther King, Jr., who is most known as the leader of the Civil Rights Movement and the “I Have a Dream Speech,” also wrote many other works including A Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which is a letter to the white religious moderate in Birmingham, Alabama. The white moderate accused King of being too quick to seek equality for Blacks. In this letter, King lays out the four basic steps of a nonviolent campaign—“collection of facts to determine whether injustices exist, negotiation, self-purification, and direct action.” King proceeds to discuss that nonviolent campaigns begin with workshops that aim to show the importance of accepting violence without retaliation. A series of workshops, as displayed in the Eyes on the Prize video, are often organized to train individuals on how to accept a certain form of humiliation, discrimination, and punishment. Nonviolent direct action, on the other hand, seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue at hand. Nonviolent direct action seeks to dramatize an issue so that it can no longer be ignored. While King vehemently opposes violent action, he asserts that constructive, nonviolent tension is necessary for growth. Overall, nonviolent direct action programs are to create a situation and environment that inevitably opens the doors to negotiation between groups and/or parties who previously could not come to an agreement. Some of the most notable of these nonviolent direct acts include sit-ins and marches. One of the most famous is the Birmingham Bus Boycott.



King then proceeds to discuss the differences between just and unjust laws. Similar to Malcolm X, Angela Davis, and the Black Panthers, King says that this is an issue of human rights and morality. Right is right and wrong is wrong. Laws formulated to maintain the status quo are not just laws. Hence, they should not be followed.

"Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law" (King).



King proceeds by providing examples of this type of unjust treatment.

"In your statement you assert that our actions, even though peaceful, must be condemned because they precipitate violence. But is this a logical assertion? Isn't this like condemning a robbed man because his possession of money precipitated the evil act of robbery? Isn't this like condemning Socrates because his unswerving commitment to truth and his philosophical inquiries precipitated the act by the misguided populace in which they made him drink hemlock? Isn't this like condemning Jesus because his unique God-consciousness and never-ceasing devotion to God's will precipitated the evil act of crucifixion? We must come to see that, as the federal courts have consistently affirmed, it is wrong to urge an individual to cease his efforts to gain his basic constitutional rights because the quest may precipitate violence. Society must protect the robbed and punish the robber."(King)

Interestingly, his example sounds similar to what happened to some Black teenagers in Jena, LA in 2007 who took a gun from a twenty-two year old white man who was trying to shoot them. The Black teenagers were charged with stealing.

Similar to King, Malcolm X professed that he was a Black Nationalist Freedom Fighter. The excerpts below are from Ballot or the Bullet. In this speech, Malcolm X is calling for voting and equal rights for Blacks. "The political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that the Black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community. The -- The time -- The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone. By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another negro into the community and get you and me to support him so he can use him to lead us astray -- those days are long gone too. We have a fight that’s common to all of us against an enemy who is common to all of us."

"So the political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we will have to carry on a program, a political program, of re-education to open our people's eyes, make us become more politically conscious, politically mature, and then we will -- whenever we get ready to cast our ballot, that ballot will be -- will be cast for a man of the community who has the good of the community of heart."(Malcolm X)



"The economic philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we should own and operate and control the economy of our community. You would never -- You can’t open up a black store in a white community. White men won’t even patronize you."

"Black Nationalism is a self-help philosophy. What's so good about it? You can stay right in the church where you are and still take Black Nationalism as your philosophy. You can stay in any kind of civic organization that you belong to and still take Black Nationalism as your philosophy. You can be an atheist and still take Black Nationalism as your philosophy. This is a philosophy that eliminates the necessity for division and argument. 'Cause if you're black you should be thinking black, and if you are black and you not thinking black at this late date, well I’m sorry for you" (Malcolm X).

As shown above, Malcolm X’s main objective was empowerment through Black Nationalism. While public opinion and mainstream media would have you to believe that King and Malcolm X were total opposites, they were actually friends in the same struggle with similar goals and objectives. However, they diverge a bit on their means to accomplish the goal of equality and civil rights.



King professed nonviolence. Malcolm X, on the other hand, asserted that nonviolence was appropriate if the negotiating group was including the marginalized group in the negotiation. When this did not occur, Malcolm X coined the term, “By any means necessary.” These means do not have to be violent. Malcolm X asserted that a range of means and strategies should be implemented into the Civil Rights Movement and in the struggle towards equality and human rights.

"Whether you are -- Whether you are a Christian, or a Muslim, or a Nationalist, we all have the same problem. They don’t hang you because you’re a Baptist; they hang you 'cause you’re black. They don’t attack me because I’m a Muslim; they attack me 'cause I’m black. They attack all of us for the same reason; all of us catch hell from the same enemy. We’re all in the same bag, in the same boat. We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation -- all of them from the same enemy. The government has failed us; you can’t deny that. Anytime you live in the twentieth century, 1964, and you walkin' around here singing “We Shall Overcome,” the government has failed us."

"When we look like -- at other parts of this earth upon which we live, we find that black, brown, red, and yellow people in Africa and Asia are getting their independence. They’re not getting it by singing “We Shall Overcome.” No, they’re getting it through nationalism. It is nationalism that brought about the independence of the people in Asia. Every nation in Asia gained its independence through the philosophy of nationalism. Every nation on the African continent that has gotten its independence brought it about through the philosophy of nationalism. And it will take Black Nationalism -- that to bring about the freedom of 22 million Afro-Americans here in this country where we have suffered colonialism for the past 400 years" (Malcolm X).

Malcolm X also discussed victimization, empowerment, human rights, and civil rights.

"I’m no politician. I’m not even a student of politics. I’m not a Republican, nor a Democrat, nor an American, and got sense enough to know it. I’m one of the 22 million black victims of the Democrats, one of the 22 million black victims of the Republicans, and one of the 22 million black victims of Americanism. And when I speak, I don’t speak as a Democrat, or a Republican, *nor an American.* I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who have -- who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism, we see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream; we’ve experienced only the American nightmare. We haven’t benefited from America’s democracy; we’ve only suffered from America’s hypocrisy. And the generation that’s coming up now can see it and are not afraid to say it."

"This is why I say it’s the ballot or the bullet. It’s liberty or it’s death. It’s freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody. America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They haven’t never had a bloodless revolution, or a nonviolent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems."

"A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She’s the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The -- The Russian revolution was bloody; Chinese revolution was bloody; French revolution was bloody; Cuban revolution was bloody; and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won’t take bloodshed. All she’s got to do is give the black man in this country everything that’s due him – everything."

"So it’s the -- it's the ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are filibustering concerning your and my rights, that's the government. Don’t say it’s Southern senators. This is the government; this is a government filibuster. It’s not a segregationist filibuster. It’s a government filibuster. Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, that's the government. Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government. Any kind of pussy-footing, that’s the government. Any kind of act that’s designed to delay or deprive you and me right now of getting full rights, that’s the government that's responsible. And any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today."

"So those of us whose political, and economic, and social philosophy is Black Nationalism have become involved in the civil rights struggle. We have injected ourselves into the civil rights struggle, and we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you're -- As long as you're fighting on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court. When the government of South Africa began to trample upon the human rights of the people of South Africa, they were taken to the U.N. When the government of Portugal began to trample upon the -- the rights of our brothers and sisters in Angola, it was taken before the U.N. Why even the white man took the Hungarian question to the U.N. And just this week Chief Justice Goldberg was crying over 3 million Jews in Russia about their human rights, charging Russia with violating the U.N. charter because of its mistreatment of the human rights of Jews in Russia "(Malcolm X).



In sum, Malcolm X and King were not vehemently opposed to each other. Instead, they had different means to accomplish similar goals. Accordingly, their primary representatives and audiences have a lot to do with this. King was representing the Black, southern Christian, while Malcolm X was representing the urban, down-trodden outcasts. These are two very different audiences that require very different strategies in order to stir social change. Malcolm X said it best.

"So, I say in my conclusion the only way we're going to solve it -- we gotta unite in unity and harmony, and Black Nationalism is the key. How we gonna overcome the tendency to be at each other's throats that always exists in our neighborhoods? And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you I’m for separation and you're for integration to keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you’re not for integration. What you and I is for is freedom. Only you think that integration will get you freedom, I think separation will get me freedom. We both got the same objective. We just got different ways of getting at it."

"But when you go to a church and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that’s designed to bring black people together and elevate black people -- join that church. Join that church. If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing that which is designed to make Black Nationalism materialize -- join the NAACP. Join any kind of organization -- civic, religious, fraternal, political, or otherwise that’s based on lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community" (Malcolm X).



Following this speech, Malcolm X took a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and became even more open-minded about the meaning of human rights. The Holy Land is located in present day Israel and is of importance to all three monotheistic religions of Abraham—Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. began to align even more in regards to their aims and goals for equality and civil rights. Tragically, both of them where assassinated trying to create social change. Let us forever be reminded and ever conscious of their legacy and the relevancy of their works.