Urban Confrontation; 47

From Northeastern University the National Information that represents. Urban come from thinking. The only real learning process is taking place thousands of miles away. When and if you become graduates of the science and out of Viet Nam then you will live and you will know you will be well educated. You will have an education which can put you in good stead to come into the 20th century for what. The truth about times happens to be is being spilled out there. If you want to describe America in the deepest and truest terms don't look first at how she looks here. Look first at what she does. They're. Usually going to become. Take Ossie Davis noted black actor and playwright

discussing communications and the black revolution searching for a new. Communications is the basis for man's interaction with other men and is also essential for a well-organized and functional society. Noted black actor and playwright Ossie Davis has dealt with the problems of communication on various levels. He has always had a strong commitment to theatre while also being deeply involved with the civil rights movement. Mr Davis begins by explaining the internal communication problem which black people face a problem which he feels blacks have had since they have been in America. Communication has always been a particularly sensitive subject with black people since we first came to these United States and we have not yet as black people solved our own internal problem of communication. And it is one of the reasons why we find it so difficult to get I think together.

We have a saying among our people that black folks won't stick together and we don't really mean that. But it is a kind of floating criticism which points to a problem that black people have always had since they have been in America. Problem of communication. Now what we'd like to do. Really. We black folks would be to have a language which no white folks could understand that we could talk to each other and get a thing together and defend ourselves and put our program over. And you know going about our business but this is never been our fortune certainly not in America when we were Africans a long time ago. We had it out disposal one instrument of communication which still has a. Cultural culturally binding function on the African continent to this day. God knows how many languages and dialects and parts of languages are on the African continent. But there was and is one way one means by which all Africans could and still do to a great extent communicate one with the other. And that was the use of the drum. The Drum. If it

beats in the north of the African continent it will finally echo down at the very bottom and as it passes all of the Africans will know what the other Africans are thinking or talking about the drum as a symbol of our cultural integrity and continuity was very meaningful to us and Africa is still is there. But when we came to these shores one of the first things that we would take and we were denied. One of the first things that was taken from us was the drum. We were denied its soothing rhythms and presence because the planters understood as well as we did the importance of the drum to the Africans. He knew that if we could communicate one to the other he might have a difficult task on his hand to control us. Therefore he took our basic means of communication from us. He took out a drum. And to this very day we Africans. We Afro-Americans as you see us going about looking very busy. If you're just looking for something distracted trying to find something you don't understand what it is. Well

be reassured that we're really looking for is that drum we want it again. Because until we get that dream we're going to be separate and distracted but once we get our hands on it one more time we're going to come together and do our black thing in a way that nobody has ever seen before. There are many questions confronting blacks today and Mr. Davis asks what does revolution mean for blacks. What part should blacks play in the peaceful social revolution going on in the United States today. And should blacks have their own revolution for blacks only. Mr. Davis sees little hope for black power through individual efforts. He is confident that a significant advancement can come about only by a unified portion of black people as a group. The time has come when we talk openly and freely on our college campuses of revolution and of course we mean by revolution. Many things. Some have romantic ideas about it. Some have ideas that are purely impulsive.

Freedom love and some think of revolution as Millie and a cry to establish one's primitive relation to oneself and to God and to all mankinds to stand up and freely throw off all of the burdens and trammels of this over civilized on civilized so-called civilization that we've inherited. To stand up free open naked and clean a man for the first time and look around to re-establish relationships with oneself and with others on a totally new spiritual honest open brotherly basis. We think of this is a revolution and many of our people younger people feel that this feeling and this impulse to dis embody ourselves and reconstitute ourselves to rebuild ourselves in the new image constitutes the whole revolution. There are those. Who are more mundane in their approach. I. Have the feeling that in addition to the feeling of freedom the desire for freedom as a spiritual food one must also deal with the questions of power with the questions

of the state and with the questions of the material aspects of all our lives. Economics Sociology and whatnot and that group understanding that a revolution must necessarily mean the taking of power from the dominant group and the giving it to the subdominant group understand by revolution that it is a change which is fundamental. And all of our relationships from top to bottom in which much blood will be shed much many mistakes will be made many people guilty and innocent will be killed. But at the end of it it would have been worthwhile because we would have stopped one form of oppression and. Destruction and had another chance given mankind another chance to build a better society on the ruins of the old. We speak of revolution now in our country primarily because we sense that the institutions about which we have lived in by which we measure ourselves and the past no

longer function. No matter how smart we are at Harvard we find it difficult to solve the problems of traffic right down town and we find it impossible to breathe fresh and clean air. We cannot feed our poor while on one hand while we build up stores and stock so surplus food that we cannot dispose off. On the other the sense that this is an insane society which we live is so with us that it's an obvious statement that has become almost a cliche to talk of what is wrong now is to merely get a grunt of acceptance from anybody because anybody can match his concept of what is wrong with yours and give you one better. Now what pot would black folks play in the revolution in the United States. Is it possible that black folks can make their own

revolution regardless of white folks or anybody else can we. Even if we had our own chain of communication and could speak Afro-American to each other which nobody could understand could we come up with a plan that was viable for black folks only. Would it help if we took five states or six states and set up a country of our own and built a wall around it and then change the whole key to our culture by inventing a totally new language. We nobody could ever understand with that solve the problem for us. Would it help if we physically removed ourselves from this continent and went back to Africa and established a new nation on some of the unused lands over there. What do black people mean by revolution. Do they mean the same thing as white people mean by revolution. Can they mean the same thing as white people mean by revolution is revolution considered scientifically a term that has no relation as to the

concepts of race or cultures or ethnic differences. Is Mox alone the answer. Is Mox amended by Lenin. The answer aided and abetted by Castro. The answer. Is the little red book of chamomile the answer for black people or will we know the revolution has finally come in black America. When instead of the little red book of Chairman Mao the black student go around waving the little black book of James bogs worker and Detroit who has written very knowingly of revolution and race in our society. These are questions which I'll be for which are on the agenda of black America today. Shall we stay in America spiritually and physically or shall we leave America spiritual and physical. So we try and embrace each other at

this level of the game or shall we retire into our separate shell until we get strength enough to decide whether or not we want to practice mutual brotherhood with you or with anybody else. I would imagine at this stage of the game if you could describe the state of affairs in black America it would be the description. Which would leave us the option of deciding whether we want at some future time to integrate all to separate or at the isle do we would would like to table the whole issue until some later date. I would think that what we would like as a group at this time would be to find some means of finding ourselves as a group strengthening ourselves as a group finding ways to use our group weight to establish a firm and a foothold from which we can then

treat with all other commas and make our decision as a group as to whether or not we want to join with some other group and their program. Now this is a political problem to some degree and it was practiced very well right here in Boston not too long ago. And whereas the black people and the struggles for any number of years have used the Jewish experience both in the past and the present as a model. The Jewish experience aiming to some degree at assimilation and integration the Jewish technique being not to make too many waves not to make too obvious a target to accommodate to sidestep the issue if possible. AW Do we know having found that the Jewish model no longer serves our purposes do we not begin to embrace the Irish model which was not

peaceful which was not accommodating which was. Devoted to button heads and being pretty violent about the things that bother the Irish a hundred years ago. I think you will remember that 100 years ago we had the Molly Maguires in the mine pits. These were Irishman who had been treated like niggers to the point where they began to almost believe it themselves rose up against the mine owners and practiced violent retaliation against those who mistreated them in the pits. You will also recall that I think in eighteen seventy eight hundred sixty three I suppose it was that was of the biggest riot so-called in our country was held in New York City and it was the draft riots. And so the black man was related to the problems that irritated the Irish. It was not only black folks that might lead the Irish to New York City up for five days.

And one of the biggest brouhaha was that we've had of that nature. I think about twelve hundred people were killed. So if you want to really look at an explosion you know you don't have to necessarily stop at Detroit and Watts and new look. You can go to one of the biggest IT WAS EVER HAD IT WAS black people were not involved except as victims and it was the Irish raising hell basically about the same things that we're raising hell now. But I think the Irish began to solve their problems not only when they resorted to violence to get what they wanted but when they began to put their heads together and to use their political skill to solve their problems. And it was when in this very city the grandfather of John Fitzgerald Kennedy who later became the first Catholic president when that grandfather became the Irish man of Boston was before that time had been you know one of the high spots of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant civilization.

And when he got to be a man on the premise or rather by the technique of all the Irish getting together and putting their votes in one pool and voting their man in. That the Irish taught themselves and those of us who came after the lesson of how it is done in America. Now the black man has been told and has believed that we make it in our country on individual accomplishments. Now your generation knows better than this but my generation bought that on individual accomplishments and so the black family would make sure that as many of the children who came up as possible were sent to schools and colleges because we figured that education would make the difference and through education we could as individuals rise above our level and do some good for the race. But we rose as individuals at the kindness of the over and oppressing groups and we subsequently found of course that we rise as

individuals but there will always vulnerable as individuals and that any moment we could always be pushed back down. What we learn from the Irish was that you don't rise as individuals in this kind of competitive society. You rise as a group. And when the group has established itself at a certain level then the individual can use his individual capacities to go from that point on but to rise at all in American society. All of the immigrant groups that came through have had to get themselves together as a group before they arose so that before there was black power there was Irish power than there was Jewish power and and polish power hunger in power. Everybody had his own power thing going to get himself established in the American scheme of things. And this is what the game means and this is how the game is played it is only lately that we blacks have begun to understand the name of the game the name of the game its power and even if we want integration.

Also we want separation or whatever we want. We will not. Get it unless we have power and power for us means using our collective consciousness. The thing that brings us all together as a battering ram to fight our way to a high level in this society and in order to make ourselves into a battering ram to establish a discipline to exercise and wield black power we need to be able to communicate one with the other. But Ossie Davis knows that the barriers to black communication are great. He thinks that the English language itself contains some racism. Here he gives a specific example of this which he calls the English language is my enemy. This is so simple that I read it in kindergarten but I hope you won't find it beneath your intellectual level. Because I have I read this military mind myself and I call this with great

perspicacity and I laugh as I do the English language is my enemy and you know some nice title. And it goes something like this. A superficial examination of Roget's Thesaurus of the English language reveals the following facts. The word whiteness has 134 synonyms forty four of which are favorable and pleasing to contemplate. As for example purity clean immaculate nice bright shining ivory fair blonde stainless clean. Chaste unblemished unsounded you know scent on the terrible upright just straightforward half genuine trustworthy as even a colloquialism a white man. Which means you know you'll be all right now only ten synonyms only ten synonyms for whiteness appear to me to have negative implications and these only in the mildest sense

such as gloss over whitewash the great one pale action etc.. Now the word blackness has a hundred and twenty synonyms sixty of which I distinctly unfavorable and none of them even mildly positive. Among the off ending 60 with such words as blot blotch smut smudge sorely begrimed suit becloud obscure dingy murky low tone threatening frowning foreboding forbidden sinister painful dismal thundering evil we kept one of the ignorant deadly clean Jersey on washed. Etc. Not to mention twenty synonyms directly

related to race such as Negro negress nigger docking Blackmore etc.. Now when you consider the fact that thinking itself the mental process thinking itself is some vocal speech. We think in words. You will appreciate the enormous heritage of racial prejudice that lies in wait for any child born into the English language any teacher good or bad white or black Jew or Gentile who uses the english language of the medium of communications is forced willy nilly to teach the black child sixty ways to despise himself and the white child sixty ways to aid and abet him and the crime blacks are still trying to eliminate this language barrier and Ossie Davis tells how recent emphasis on black is beautiful is a prime example of this effort.

Now it might seem it may seem that language and words do not weight that heavily in our conduct but I assure you that they do. And one of the great things that has happened in the recent in recent days has been the degree to which the blacks young blacks in particular have stopped accepting the old definitions of black. They have decided to take it upon themselves to establish a new definition. Black is beautiful. Now we accept black as being beautiful and we adopt hair styles clothing styles and cultural styles to aid and abet us in making that determination. But not so long ago Black was not beautiful even to black people because we had had been taught through all the language that we wore as the 60s synonyms said dirty unclean unwashed foul not worthy

of love. Or respect the peaceful social revolution for blacks as Ossie Davis sees it involves new priorities for communications. While this means the continued search for a new drum Davis concludes that a redefinition of everyone's life their goals and their selves is essential for successful change in both the United States and throughout the world. We intellectuals at this stage of the game can measure our effectiveness by the very fact that nobody is listening too much to what we say which means that we must not be saying much of anything. It behooves us to ruin a new language a new means of communication and I'm talking to white and black folks now by which we can say you know what we can. We have to stop talking Harvard and stop talking Columbia and stop talking Berkeley and talk ghetto and guts and

grass and hunger and poverty and filth and disease. Some of us some of the young ones of you have already sense this. You have already turned your backs on the organized and institutional definitions of education. You are beginning to redefine yourself and your goals and your life. And in relationship to other values most of you. Those of you who are intellectually lucky have already decided that the only true educational institution we've got going for us in our country today is not one of our academic Giants. The only real learning process is taking place thousands of miles away. When and if you become graduates of the science and ahhed of Viet Nam then you will learn and you will know you will be

well educated. You will have an education which can put you in good stead to come into the twentieth century. For what. The truth about times happens to be is being spelled out there. If you want to describe America in the deepest and truest terms don't look first at how she looks. Look first at what she does then compare it with what she does here and you will understand as we all do the same about out control that will shock you and infuriate you. But it will stimulate and inspire you to change it. Communications and the black revolution to communicate you must have something you

want to say that needs to be said. You must have an audience that wants you to say it and you must have a way to get the attention of that audience to hold it long enough to get that message across. Television as it now is motion pictures as in our libraries as they now stand in news papers magazines do not form this function. We must those of us who care to keep any kind of dialogue going keep searching and our efforts to find fossils a new drum a drum that we can beat. And wring out the virtues which have been forgotten too often in these days which have become cliches but basically the virtues of love of care of understanding of putting all things into one perspective whether it's the environment or one's personal life one's

personal morality one's concern for all mankind which is also one's concern for oneself. Communications and the black revolution. The blacks trying to get it together and when they do I don't think the blacks will fight a revolution that is only a black revolution. It will be a black revolution of course but it will be the spark perhaps for world revolution. The blacks will be at the center but the fight will call for support from everybody. And I think the only way we can ever really arrive at a world that kind of takes its proper place is not to think it not to read it not to wish it not even to will it. We must do it. If a revolution has any value and virtue it is that place in which men and men redefine

themselves and become something other than the limited thing they were before. Northeastern University has rock you Ossie Davis noted black actor and playwright discussing communications and the black revolution searching for a new ground. Of views and opinions expressed on the preceding program. Are not necessarily those on Northeastern University or this nation. This week program was for the use by date and who operates. With Harvard University. Directed by Leonard. With technical supervision by our executive producer for urban confrontation. His letters to my. Urban confrontation is produced by the Division of instructional communications at the nation's largest private university. Northeastern University request for a tape recorder

copy of any program in a series may be addressed to the urban confrontation. Northeastern University Boston Massachusetts 0 to 1 1 5. This program was used by the Dept. of radio production. Why are they there to record. Your announcers. And. This is the national educational radio network.