Mental Consciousness

Published in Issue 236 of The Black Commentator on July 5, 2007
By Larry Pinkney

This week I ask you to journey back to November 1972, read, analyze, and compare the message contained in the October / November 1972 Newsletter of the San Francisco Black Caucus with where Black America is today in 2007.

The following is from that 1972, San Francisco Black Caucus piece entitled, Mental Consciousness:

“The sweeping Presidential victory of Richard Millhouse Nixon was certainly nothing of a surprise to aware Black people in this country. It points to the obvious right wing, reactionary anti-Black sentiments of the majority of white Americans. It also signals the beginning of the most bitter internal conflicts that this country has yet to face. It proves that the goals and ideals that this country was supposedly founded upon were then and are now nothing but a sham. In addition, Mr. Nixon’s overwhelming reelection points to the fears and paranoia of white America tak[ing] definite priority over the welfare and education of impoverished Black children, jobless Black parents and over the correcting of one of the most unjust, lopsided [legal] systems to be found anywhere in the so-called democracy of the Western bloc nations (despite all [of its] eloquent verbalizations of concern for nonwhite people).

White America has done it again! She has once again slapped the face and ignored the cry of the ones whose ancestors she enslaved at her birth. In conclusion we say to those of the Black community who saw fit to defect to the Nixon administration–an administration which has shown through word and deed its utter contempt for the agonies and pains of Black people–; thank you for identifying yourselves as being opportunists and traitors to the very goals, hopes, and aspirations for which so many Black folks–young and old alike–have paid such a dear price marked in blood throughout this land. You are still biologically Black and for all your pimping of your own people you cannot change that. Nor will your masters in the Nixon administration forget what you have done, for they too realize that since you could not find it in yourselves to be concerned and loyal to your own flesh and blood, how could you ever be fully trusted to serve in their racists interests? Your defection from the Black community for your own self interests will not be forgotten! Nor will history speak lightly of what you have done. Now that you have been willingly waved as political flags by your new found masters, what will you do? Where will you turn when they tire of your insipid stupidity and you have lost your usefulness as a ‘good Black house nigger?’

To those of us who are Black in mind and body, we say be strong, for we will not give in to the dispassionate, contemptible, actions of the Nixon administration and its lackeys. We are assured that we all will only fight harder and the San Francisco Black Caucus knows you will too! Lasima Tushinde Mbilashaka (We Shall Succeed Without A Doubt!)”

Those words were published and spoken almost thirty-five years ago now. Do you see any parallels to the present? Think about it.

We Black people, at great cost, survived Richard Millhouse Nixon to the present. We must once more get through the insanity, hypocrisy, and cruelty of white America and its stooges, this time in the 21st Century.

The struggle continues and we must intensify it in order to keep it real for ourselves and those to come.

Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)