The Dissenters; 1; Daniel Watts

So, you know, yet we spent ten years trying to integrate your restaurants, you know, the meaningless. National Educational Television presents the dissenters, conversations with the editors and publishers of Political Opinion magazine. This week, Daniel Watts, editor of Liberator, a journal advocating black power, interviewed by Donald Fauzer. When it has found it necessary to address itself to the black community, it has only addressed itself to one segment of the black community, and yet there are very three distinct black communities today in America. There's a segment of black people who wish only to return to Africa. They are the nationalists, the extreme nationalists who wish to go back to Africa. This is what they want, and this is something that the government and all of the so-called professional do-gooders from the white and liberal community has refused to listen to.

It's the fact that there is a sizable segment throughout this country of Americans of African descent who wish only to return on to Africa. Then there's another segment, the Separatists. This includes, of course, the black Muslims and includes also a great hundreds of thousands of people on the periphery of the Muslim movement who wishes a separate state. This came out of the black power conference in Newark. Then the third community are the integrationists in which you would find the NAACP and the Urban League type Negro. But very curiously, in that third camp of the integrationists are also the revolutionaries who are on the other side of the corner, your stoically calm Michael's and your rap brown, who say, yes, we must stay here and we must fight. We must overcome this country to make it something better, a decent place for all people that live at least for black people that live. How do you see the strength of these three groups, you see the integrationists? We must stay here and we must fight.

We must overturn this country to make it something better, a decent place for all people that live at least for black people that live. And this means more burning. More burning. We should have questioned about it, because a half a billion dollars went up in flames and Detroit and all the President of the United States could say was, let us pray. I mean, this shows you how bankrupt he was in just in terms of ideas, in terms of perceiving what was going on in America, that black people are ready to burn down all of America. And all he could say was, let us pray. Well, if that's not a crazy issue about how valid the whole, the violent, the whole bit of violence is. I mean, isn't there a moral question raised here for, let's say, some Negroes, a moral and sociological question about whether they should back this kind of violence in the world? Morality is the luxury that you can enjoy at a cocktail party after you have power. You can stand around and talk about morality. But you know, this is one of the things that whites have always tried to do, the rest of the black community, is impose their concept of morality on us. You see, this double standard, you see, in other words, it's all right for whites to

literally use the sick shooter to, to, to, to gun their way to the top. But somehow they are the, they want us in the black community to have, to be Christ-like figures, to be noble, submit ourselves to indignities and violence, you see, so they can sit and cut through a three inch steak and talk about how noble those Negroes are, lying on the ground and having dogs bite at us. But you're talking here, you see, about a violence, which by the very violent sake is bound to alter the system. The question is whether the system is robust enough to stand that kind of violence. And whether you're not going to bring the whole House of Cards down on you by nipping away at the foundation. Let me say this to, you know, and that's because it's a very good point, because for those of us who do try to look beyond the barricades, it is quite conceivable, you see, that white America may very well say, well, I will rather see American flames than to give up my privileges or the share of my privileges with their black people.

So it seems, as I've said in the fact, in the September issue of the Liberator, I said, the form, the revolution is going to take, will take, will depend upon the whites. The whites will determine whether it will be a peaceful revolution or a bloody one. They cannot, by the way, determine the outcome or predict the outcome, but they can determine what form it's going to take. But if we all go to the barricades, we'll have a special arm band for people such as yourself, make you an honorary soul brother, and you could cross the line. If we do go to that, yeah, but if the country goes to the barricades, what happens then? The whites are 90% of the population, 98% of the party, and what is going to stop the whites from? Nothing. And the history of America has told us that white America is quite capable of creating its gas ovens and marching us off, but we are not going to go off peacefully singing we shall overcome. The point is, I think Robert Kennedy, sounded a Robert Kennedy stated, and I'd just like

to quote this, this must be a nation for all of us, or it will be a nation for none of us. And Robert Kennedy stated this in July 24th, 1967, and James Boggs writing in the Liberated in January 1967 stated in an eye field, the mood of the black community, we shall have power, or we shall perish in the streets, there's no if ands and busts, there are no alternatives to this. Either we are going to share in the abundance of America, or no one is going to share it. But to the majority of Negroes in the United States feel that way? You don't need a majority to make a revolution. I think the figure has been computed somewhere between 7% and 10% of the population is all that you need. And according to the Lou Harris poll, and he's white, 35% of black Americans, and I have no reason to accept his figures, except I think it's very low, he said 35% of black Americans considered that the rioting and the burnings are very important for our salvation in terms of our liberation, and it's helping the cause.

So you see, we're already over, there's a so-called magic 10% that's required for revolution. Is this going to take place mostly in the north? Is this the aim of the revolutionary Afro-Americans in the United States? Well, it will take place also in the south, it has to, and particularly in the south, because in the south is where we have the concentration of semi-skills, semi-literate black people who can't possibly, at this point, participate in the technology that's America. They have no skills to bring to this technology. The Negro, basically, in America today is obsolete. There is no place for approximately five, I think it's five, six million black people who have absolutely no skills, no training to be deprived of training and skills. There's no place, whether on the agrarian south in the fields, which are now almost completely mechanized or in the urban centers where you have the computer age.

There's no place. Well, now, if they're not all to die bloody in the streets, what kind of programs do you propose to lift these Afro-Americans? Well, I would say if one, the program would have to be devised in such a manner so it is not a handout, it's not welfare, and yet at the same time it would literally have to be that. In other words, you'd have to, America would have to resign itself to the fact that it has at least two generations of black people that's going to have to support in some meaningful way while it concentrates its energies upon the young Afro-American child and prepare that child to enter into the technology. This is on the positive side in terms of program, so that perhaps some form of a guaranteed annual wage make-work projects. And even that, you see, becomes self-defeating because as you and I know, you know, I think within the next 15 to 20 years, something like 25 percent of all of the work, a 25 percent of the people in America would be doing all of the work.

And the whole question is going to revolve about keeping the kids, white kids, of course, and nothing's been mentioned about black kids in any of these studies, keeping the kids in school until the age of 30, giving them a PhD, bringing them into the labor market for 20 years, and pensioning them over for 50. I mean, this is what America is facing without resolving the whole question of race. The one of the things that brought Liberator Magazine to national attention recently were a couple of articles called anti-Semitism in the Black ghetto. And James Baldwin and Aussie Davis both left your board because of this, and I'm curious if you did dress yourself to that. Does this anti-Semitism, with these articles anti-Semitism in fact, what is the position of Liberator Magazine? Well, let's, you know, we can be relatively honest on this subject. You know, Benay Briff and AJC American Jewish Committee have done a pretty good job of PR for the Jewish community, so they've made it so that soon as you mentioned the word

Jew in any article, you immediately anti-Semitic. But let's get back to the question of the articles that appeared in the Liberator. The question of the articles that appeared in the Liberator addressed itself to the dilemma of the Black people in the ghetto. And that is, one, on one hand, the awareness that the Jewish community, as opposed to the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community, the Jewish community probably among the whites have made the largest contribution toward the whole civil rights movement on one hand. And on the other hand, the Jewish community was also the slum landlord and the merchants in the ghetto selling shoddy inferior goods, overpriced goods. And this was basically what the articles were about. Now, I refused to publish the two letters of protest that Mr. Ossie Davis and James Baldwin wanted me to publish on a grounds of principle. Point here is that they were the typical Negro who has made it out of the Black ghetto and then refused to identify, refused to help.

And as I've told the people of the American Jewish Committee, that if they wish to publish an article in the Liberator, refuting the articles that reran, I would publish it. But on the no circumstance was I going to rescue James Baldwin and Ossie Davis from the Jewish community wrath, because Baldwin and Davis and people like that, they have made it, and they have not turned back one penny, one dime, to the Black community to help their brothers. And this was the only reason why I refused to publish their articles. You want to alienate all of the intellectuals? We don't need them. They're dead weight. They are dead weight. They are part and parcel of the establishment. Well, where are the leaders of the Afro-American community going to come from? They are going to come. They're coming out of the campuses. They're coming out of the kids who were involved in cofo and snake disillusioned by King's Circuses, running up and down and screaming, we shall overcome, that's your stokely com michael's in your rap brown. This is where the new militant educated black leadership is going to come from and is

coming from. Off the campuses, not off the streets, not out of the theaters, and above all, not out of the nigger churches, which is also part and parcel of the white power structure, always the pie and the sky. And the white community, when the white power structure talks about dealing with the leaders of the white community, the white church, the white priest, the last one that they think about. But when they talk about leadership in the black community, the first thing they hang out, they call it is when he's old pork chop preachers, there's got a storefront church going. He's hustling pot in his cellar. He's got a bordello upstairs hustling girls, 12-year-old girls upstairs, and he's turning on the poor old sisters for a dollar of throw on Sunday mornings with this pie and a sky. No. This day has to end. Our leadership is going to come off of the black campuses in this country. Well, how strong are they within the Negro community at large? Well, you have only to look in terms of brown and stokely, oh my god, I think they represent a good cross-section of the new black militancy in this country, and in terms of who they

are appealing to. It's the young black people who's making this revolution, not these old pork choppers who finally made it out of Harlem and are now living out in St. Albans and shuffling their shoes to pay off that mortgage on that white elephant that the whites move out of. What about the mothers and fathers of the stokelies and the rap proud of them? They're proud of them. You know, in the last two years, how many, you know, mothers and fathers have come to the liberators' office and said, you know, Mr. Watts, we're a little confused about what you're doing. We think maybe that people like stokelies pushing a little too far, but we're really proud of you because you're doing what we wanted to do when we were your age. I don't know. No, the black people are ready. I'm not worried about the leadership for it. What are their excuses for not having moved before? What excuses have Ma and Pa got for not doing what stokely and rapper doing? Well, you know, it's a very curious thing about white Americans. They've been brought up in the age of instant coffee and instant tea, and you now expect

instant revolution of us, but you know, it took the Russian Revolution 400 years, the Irish Revolution 700 years. We've only been at it 300 years, and I think it's only in the last five years it's been accelerated. And I think it's very little that, you know, that white Americans can do to stem the tide, to turn it back, or turn it off its course. The excuses that my mother and father had, my mother and father, they worked hard to give me an education, to give me something that they didn't have. They weren't, they didn't, they weren't thinking in terms of turning out a revolutionary. They were thinking turning out, you know, someone who was able to cope with his environment, a little better, earn a better living, you know, and live a little better. But once the revolution began, and people of my generation and generation coming behind me began to get involved in a revolution, most of the parents with tears in their eyes have been extremely proud of their kids.

Well, but you did, you see, make the image that your parents had of you. That is, you were a successful architect. You did work for one of the major architectural firms in the United States, designed major buildings. And you left that. Yeah. Good reason. Well, because the American dream is a lie. The American dream, you know, it's a matter of, if you get a good education and you work hard, you'll make it to the top. That's if you're white. If you're black, it doesn't matter. You were on your way. You know, I got as far as I could go, you know, and I, you know, I was black and I could go no further. It didn't matter, you see. And at that point, I had the choice then, you see at that particular point, there are there do like so many of people of my generation who've done, you know, who buy the New York Times and tuck it in their arms and they walk down Madison Avenue and then when they get back to hall and they talk about what a big man they are on Madison Avenue and when they're nothing but messengers, you know, downtown. But they have a Tasha case, you see, and that sort of turns the brothers on of town. But they deceived themselves and I just wasn't ready for that kind of self-deception.

It's a form of self-deception that you really have to practice and really work at. You see, I'm raising the issue here of whether this, of how, how distinctly the system has to alter in order to offer you the kinds of opportunities that should buy birth right in this country, be yours. And I guess I'm still pressing, you know, to see what kinds of a system we're changing here. What do we do with the government? The federal government as we find it or state governments as we find them. What do we do with banking systems as we find them? And I don't find answers to most of these problems. Well, the answers are going to lie in self-interest, in other words, when the representatives of the federal state government and the leaders of industry realize that black America is determined to do, you know, to destroy America. If we don't have our fair share, then they're going to be forced to come to the conference table.

They're going to shunt aside Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young and Martin Luther King. And they're going to begin to talk with the militants. They're going to begin to talk with the representatives of those, you know, who can tell the brother with that Molotov cocktail, all right, brother, cool it because I'm negotiating with Whitey. Maybe we can get a piece of the action this time, you know, in Detroit. There are only two blocks away from their General Motors building there. That whole complex. I don't know if you're familiar with Detroit or not, but there are only two blocks away with the Molotov cocktails from the General Motors building, the whole industrial complex where the particularly executive offices are. This is what it's really about. But it's a significant altering of the system, of the economic system as it exists. I would suspect that's probably going to have to take place. A significant. Now, I don't know whether this leads us into the socialist, the so-called socialist camp where you have a different distribution of goods and a different distribution of profits or the profit motivation has taken out and you have a whole new concept in terms of approach. I don't know. This is something seems to me that will develop out of the revolution, you see.

The revolution itself will generate its own programs, its own demands, as you know about revolutions. They start out with very modest demands and wind up extreme, demanding everything and eventually having to take everything, you see. Well, the point I'm making here is that if you don't really know what you're after or then the fact you're dissatisfied with the way things are, how do you know what to go after? We know what we are after. We're after power in terms, in other words, why should we have to organize a picket line outside general motors to get general motors to hire black employees? If we had power within the framework of the general motors empire, we would be able to work, participate in some of the policy-making decisions, which would determine the policy toward the hiring of people, you see. This is what the power we're talking about, you see. It isn't the integration of schools.

It isn't the integration of even residences that's important. The problem here is the problem of power. How can we get into position so that we can determine some of the policies, power in terms of the state department, so that the state and department African-desk will have a more positive and favorable attitude toward the African states, you see. This is the kind of power that we're talking about. We're not really talking about wanting to live next door to you because most whites I wouldn't want to live next door to you know, most whites didn't go to Columbia University. I did. So I don't want to live next to whites who didn't, you know, third grade dropouts. Oh, thank you. But that's job power. What you're really saying is that what the African-desk is, what are jobs, meaning jobs? No, no, economic power. You see, it's not just jobs. Now, we're talking about policy decision-making, it's not just a job factor. It is the executive vice president. It's the deputy undersecretary of state for the African-desk that writes and makes the recommendations to the president in terms of attitudes toward, let's say, Guinea or

Mali, if you will, or the UAR. This is the kind of meaningful power you see that we're talking about. It is the kind of meaningful power if it's meaningful, by the way, in general notice to decide how much chrome is going to go on the Cadillac this year, you know, as the ultimate in power in terms of the general notice. But that's, I personally prefer a Rolls-Royce, but that's a personal preference. If I had the power, you see, I would have, because it would be black, convertible. Well, one of the things that you have mentioned before, both in reference to Martin Luther King and in reference to the religion uptown, and you seem to be scathingly denied the value of religion at all, I think of it as a moral influence, if maybe no other kind of influence. Is this not a meaningful part of our society and of the black community? Can I tell you something, and the only way I can explain to you how I perceive of religion in this country, and I was brought up in a very strict religious Episcopalian household.

For 150 years, black people have been marching up and down on Sunday morning, picketing the white churches of this land, demanding acceptance as we are all children of God. We wish to worship together, black and white together. Well, finally, a couple of years ago, some of the white churches opened their doors on Sunday morning and allowed black people in to worship with the white parishioners. As the black people and the white people stood there, that coal Sunday morning, and the ministers stood there, and he raised his hands to say, let us pray, the white theologians announced that God was dead. So you see, once we finally got to church, you killed your own religion. Your theologians today announced that God is dead. This is one of the great dialogues that is going on in the Christian world. If this didn't happen, then we will start to talk about integrating your churches.

Are you drawing a one-to-one relationship here that you think that God is dead because Afro-Americans are now in churches? That's right. That's precisely correct. Christianity, by the way, is not an African religion. Now, you really believe that? I honestly do that your theologians would never, you know, they might have fought it, but they would not have come out so strongly, you know, this great dialogue if black people hadn't started to integrate your white churches on Sunday morning. Most people would see this as an adjunct to the kind of questions that society is raising itself today, that you are raising about our society, that they are raising about their church and God, that the hippies are raising about whether it's worthwhile to do anything but distribute flowers. Now, your theologians, you know, they said that God is dead, so why bother? Totally, old minister, to close the door and let the big rose out, let them go back to their own churches. So, you see no hope for this as a moral system? No, Christianity, no.

Well, now, what about the other religions involved in the United States? What about, I don't believe in any of them. No, I accept the biological fact that we are born, we live, and we die. You see, I don't involve in all the rest of their dying, believe it, you know. Well, you've kicked it all, but what about the rest of the, what about the rest of the world? Well, it's a kind of a necessary crutch, and I think it's important for us in the revolutionary movement to remove this crutch and provide new, new crutches that people calline, lean on, and it's called self-reliance, you see. No, I'll buy the biological fact that why we are here, you see, and just reject, in view of how Christianity has managed to work always to the advantage of whites around the world, I will reject that as one religion. Well, what about the role of Elijah Muhammad in the Black African kingdom? Well, let's say something about that. I think that the role of Elijah Muhammad, if one could discount the religious aspect of

his movement, I think it's a very positive role. Now here's a case where a black man has taken a religion, which, by the way, is more closely African than Christianity is, and have used it, and is using it, you see, to enrich an noble black people to give us a sense of identity for those who are involved in the movement. So from that point, and from that basis, I certainly would be tolerant toward the black Muslims and Muhammadism at this point. How does his strength figure in the community? I would say that his strength is real in, I have no way to gauge in terms of actual membership, but just in terms of people who are sympathetic and who admire the movement. I'd say it's great, it's really large, in terms of the people who are involved around the periphery of the movement, and who subscribed to some of the things that he espoused as I would say that it was great, his influence was tremendous, and more meaningful than King

or Wilkins or John. But then his strength would be so, so, so black and not with the white community at all. Right. And this is your argument against King and your argument against King. No, my argument against King has nothing to do with the fact that King is trying to get black people involved with whites, because I recognize that somewhere along the line, if we survive the confrontation at the barricades, that we're still going to have to deal with whites, my argument with King is that, and here I'm being extremely kind to him, that he's totally unrealistic in analyzing the whole racist, you know, white racist America, and then talking about this great concept of love, you see, instead of focusing on survival for black people, he always talks about sacrificing our bodies to this thing called Christianity, you know, this alien religion that's been posed on. To me, King has done something about another Negro Baptist preacher, if you think.

Now you must remember that the white community helped produce the kings of this land. You see, we have had to develop all kinds of gimmicks to turn whitey on in order to keep you from killing us, you know, we've had to turn you on, whether it was the poor, you know, shuffling of the shoes, and some of the white liberals today, you don't particularly like black people to shuffle your shoes, you know, you have a different concept of black people, still beneath you, but it's a different concept, as long as we remain just beneath you, you know, you can sort of tolerate us, and King, you know, cut a new figure, you know, he could articulate well, he had a certain cadence in his voice, and he was a Negro preacher, and he was preaching non-violence, and that turned you on, you know, coming out of your own violent heritage, it turned you on, you know, to see these noble people talk about non-violence, and, you know, talk about faith. Yes, for whites, but not for the black people who align there on the ground being clobbered by bull corners and being shot at, there's nothing noble, you see, but this

is your William Faulkner, you know, and intruder in the dust, the only way he could conceive of a good Negro was this sort of a Jesus-like figure, you know, who had to rise above everything. We couldn't, you know, be made of really, you know, blood and bones and flesh, and have our weaknesses, our human frailty, you see, we always have to be super. For other groups, there are other groups that are equally effective within the white community, and the NAACP. They haven't seen precisely, they're effective in the white community, but how about the black... Look, let's try. I know what you're saying, but let us look at this whole picture. Now, you have an insurrection taking place in Doric or Detroit. Now, presumably, we have three Negro leaders, Reverend Martin Luther King, Roy Wilkins, and Whitney Young. Now, in the normal course of event, the only roles that these three illustrious gentlemen could have played was to go into Newark and to Detroit, either to lead the revolution

or to tell the brothers to cool it, but they didn't either. And you didn't expect them to, in other words, you applied the double-standard. Now, remember, you tolerate in the Negro leadership, which you won't tolerate in your own white leadership. Who is the leaders in Newark? Ah, there are indigenous leaders. At the time of the Newark insurrection, and the Detroit insurrection, a thousand black people met in the Newark for the Newark Black Power Conference representing a cross-section of black America. And there are indigenous black leaders, but you see, they're not going to tell you what you want to hear. So you just ignore them, and you rather sit and take a loss of a half a billion dollars going up in flames in Detroit, rather than getting in touch with the indigenous black leaders in Detroit, and telling them, look, all right, we've gotten the message, what is it that you want? Let's see your program. No, you rather see Detroit burn down rather than do that. This is why we believe that white America is just not sincere.

They don't want to negotiate. All right. What do you see wrong with the United States today, Dan Watts? Well, what do I see wrong with it? I think I can answer that by posing another question to you. Well, I see, well, I see it within your own community, the white community, the young whites, the so-called hippies, withdrawing from the American scene, refusing to participate in the American dream, you know. This is NET, the National Educational Television Network. Thank you.