Revolution comes from the German word Umwalzung and means a complete change. It is a complete change or replacement of a system. The destruction of the old for the new. What the so-called Black man and woman have been doing is seeking to be included in a system that already exists. We have been fighting to be accepted into a current system even though said system has excluded us for nearly 400 years. This is not revolution. This is not a separate system. This is the same system. Until we are comfortable having our own we will never truly revolutionize. There is nothing wrong with being a separate people and building a nation and until we understand this without the fear of being labeled discriminatory, we will never truly revolutionize. All other people have done it but as soon as the Black man says he wants to run his own businesses, as soon as he says he wants to live among his own people, as soon as he says he wants to build Black schools that teach Black children about Black history now he’s acting funny. He’s a supremacist, a racist, a separatist, extremist, and every other “-ists” in the dictionary. He’s radical and he’s militant because he wants his own same as others have their own.
Only in America is so much emphasis placed on color and other countries to which she has infected follow her traditions. Only the dishonest will fail to admit that the social, political, and economic atmosphere of this country (U.S.) encourages racism. Doesn’t matter where a man is, if he is rich or poor, skinny or fat, smart or ignorant, black, white, Chinese, or Asian, whether he is a plain man or an artist, if he reads books or not, if he is intelligent or simple, whatever he is he must be able to think for himself. As long as the so-called Black man and woman has been in America he has not been encouraged to think for himself or to seek anything of his own without America’s permission. He has not been capable of fully revolutionizing. He has been emancipated but his freedom only meant a transfer of ownership. He has gone from the property of the plantation to the property of the state. Then he was amended into society. He’s an add-on. He was added to the Constitution since before then he was America’s slave and unworthy of sitting down at her table to eat. So these people she referred to as Black had to be included into the system and still he was a slave and what to the slave is the Fourth of July?
He is taught to fight for a country that has never fought for him. To honor heroes who were never heroes to him. Twelve U.S. presidents were slave owners and four of the first five presidents were products of a Virginia society in which slavery was a part of everyday life. So while Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were all considered patriots who valued liberty, they were also all slave owners. Yet this people given the name Blacks are encouraged to regard her heroes as his own. This is not revolution. This is not a new system. This is begging to be part of a system that has long since rejected him. But before a people can revolutionize anything that people must first have a revolution of self. A shifting of perspective and complete change in thinking and if a man cannot change the way he thinks then he cannot change anything. Everything begins in the mind and so the revolution is in our thoughts. The revolution begins in the mind of the revolutionary first. If you cannot change yourself then you cannot change me.
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” – Marcus Garvey (he said it before Bob Marley’s Redemption Song)
The PBS Blog 