Speeches- Unknown Use on Black Political Strategy, no date, 1965-1975?

-1Somebody on the inside said once that politics is the art of the possible. But for the black outsider in American, politics in America has been the art of the impossible.

It has been the art of the impossible, because it has been the art of trying to make a fundamental change in a political system by using the structures and instruments that were designed to perpetuate that system.

It has been the art of the impossible because it has been the art of trying to make a social revolution with moderate tools that were invented to prevent social revolutions.

It has been the art of impossible because of the nature of politics, which is the art of making some things impossible for outsiders, and because of the extremity of the black man's situation, which cannot be changed unless all things are made possible.

Because of the black man's situation, which is radical by any definition, and because of the nature of American politics, which is moderate to conservative by any definition, the black man in America has been condemned to seek radical ends within a political framework which was designed to prevent sudden and radical social and economic changes.

For almost 100 years now, the black outsiders of America have been squirming within the halters of this maddening dilemna. During this period, the representatives of the outsiders in the councils of the insiders have made striking gainsas individuals. But black people as a group have not been able to change their status and their social and economic conditions with political instruments. And the question we must grapple with now is whether it will ever be possible to achieve fundamental socail and economic change by the practice of politics as defined by the insiders.

-2The questions now - and the question is radical because the times are radical and because our situation is radical -- is whether politics is revelant to our contemporary crisis which cannot be resolved without political programs of depth and dimension never before attempted in America.

In the old politics -- the politics of deals and trades and patronage, the politics of place and priviilege and individual advancement -- is the old politics relevant to the issues of bread for the millions and housing and education for the poor?

Is politics relevant to the question of the redistribution of income and resources and restructing of the fundamental institutions of this society?

Is politics relevant to black reality?

Beyond all that, beyond the specific problems of black people, we must ask whether politics is relevant to white people.

Is it relevant to the emptiness and hysteria and the unresolved social and economic problems in the white community?

Can the old politics create white individuals who will not need racial scapegoats to solve their social and economic and sexual anxieties?

Watts and Newark and Detroit put these questions on the agenda of America life. In a very real sense, these rebellions were devastating critiques of the American Way of Politics.

In rebellion, the black people of America said that they were voting more and enjoying it less.

In rebellion, the black people of America said that politics in America has failed them, and that it is necessary now to create a new politics that can address itself to the real problems of this profoundly racist society.

-3It is against this background that we must view the question of the black man's role in American politics.

And in the light of these events, and the history these events reflect, we must say frankly that black people have no role in American politics.

Black people are the outsiders, the disinherited, of the American politcial system.

As human beings, they live outside white America in numerous black colonies. And as voters and political persons, they inhabit the margins on the periphery of the system. Even the persons who represent these outsiders in the councils of the insiders occupy a marginal position -- as the Adam Powell and the Dodd cases indicated.

From time to time, the inhabitants of these black colonies have played crucial roles as pawns of persons inside the system. More sifnificantly, they have crucially affected the system by their presence on the periphery. In other words, they have acted on the system from a distance. Indeed, one might say that the political history of America is a series of approaches and withdrawls from the pressing reality of the black outsiders on the margin. In summation, then, the role of the black man outside American politics is the dual role of a political pawn for insiders and a protagonist from the outside of the whole political pawn for insiders and a protagonist from the outside of the whole politcal system.

In considering this dual role, we have to deal with what J.D.B. Miller, the politcal theorist, calls the politics of the center and the circumference. We have to deal, in other words, with a quasi-colonial relation. As Kenneth Clark noted in his book, Dark Ghetto, "The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and -- above all -- economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject people, victims of the greed, cruelty,

-4insensitivity, guilt, and feear of their masters. What I am concerned to emphaize here is that these colonies are controlled politically from the outside. Ultimate policy-making power lies in the hands of aliens who have their own representatives, many of them black, on the spot with power to see that the will of the white center is obeyed in the black circumference. We must note also that the inhabitants of the center and the inhabitants of the circumference do not deal with each other directly. Black people and white people, as Gunnar Myrdal noted, deal with each other, like two foreign countries, "through the medium of plenipotentiaries."

I say this with bluntness to emphasize the fact that when we talk about black politics we are not talking about ordinary politics. And we are not talking about ordinary politics because the American political system has not created a single social community in which the reciprocal rules of politics could apply.

Conventional politics cannot solve this problem, because conventional political politics is a part of the problem.

It is a part of the problem in the sense that the political system is the major bulwark of racism in America.

It is a part of the problem in the sense that the political system is structured to repel fundamental social and economic change.

We hear a great deal about the deficiencies, real or imagined, of certain black leaders, but not enoug attention, it seems to me, is paid to the framewwork within which they operate. The framework prevents radical growth and innovation -- and it was designed to prevent radical growth and innovation.

What we have to deal with here is what Arthur Schlesigner, Jr., called the parades of power, the fact that power within the system is

-5necessary to do certain things but that power within the system makes it impossible to do most things. When John F. Kennedy became President, he was no political novice. But he didn't realize, Schlesigner tells us, "how beautifully the [government] structure was organized to prevent anything from happening."

From the very beginning, the American political structure has been beautifully organized to keep anything from happening. We need not deal here with the theory that the constitutianal convention was a conspiracy against the revolutionary ideals of Declaration of Independence. But it is obvious from a cursory examination of that document that the Founding Fathers were animated by a desire to protect property and privilege from sudden social experiments. The theory of checks and balances, for example, is based on the theory that privilege must be protected from people. Thomas Jefferson, a large and wealthy slaveowner, protested against the anti-people biases of the new government. But he did not prevail, and additonal safeguards were later built into the system to protect the rising industrial directorate. One of these safeguards, of course, was the two-party system which was designed, in part, to filter out radicalism and to force dissent to express itself within two moderate chanels. Insofar as the black man is concerned, one can say of the two parties what a political insider said to Lord Bryce: They are like two bottles of the same size, the same color and the same shape, with the same label--both of them empty.

The criticism I make here of politics in American could be extended to most political structures, certainly of most political structures in the West. Governments cannot operate without support, which means in practice that they must identify with certain interests in society. And this means to America that government has usually identified with the interests of white people.