Transcription
Now, ever since the invention of "black people" in the 14th century, when that name, "black" or, uh, "negro," was placed on certain groups of people by European colonizers, that identity has taken a strong hold and has cemented itself into the minds of certain people.
Over the course of the last 500 years, there have been certain attempts, especially within the last, let's say, 100 years, 120 years, certain attempts to get people who have been branded as black to remove themselves from that name because it has a lot of derogatory meanings behind it. And so, because they've come to accept themselves as being black or negro or any of those types of labels, there's been resistance when others have tried to come within the group to educate people upon the effects and the importance of having a proper name.
The resistance is, um, is, is pretty widely felt and has been felt because you're trying to, in the eyes of people with that identity, they feel as if you're trying to remove something from them. And in a sense, it could be seen that way, and it's understandable. But sometimes, when you're trying to help somebody with something, they'll take it in a way that seems like you're trying to do something that they don't want you to do.
So, what we're going to do is talk about a little bit of the history of the name "black" and "negro" trying to be removed from people and how the resistance has overcome that objective of trying to remove that name and replace it with something better. So, what we'll do is we'll start with, uh, Richard B. Moore's book, "The Name Negro is Origin in Evil Use." And Richard B. Moore, he's someone who was around during the Civil Rights movements, and he was one of the strong advocates for changing names because he understood the power behind having certain names and being able to, to name and define yourself, which is something that black people have not been able to do.
So, let's get a little bit into this and, um, see what he's got to say. Most of his speeches and writings after 1960 included warnings to eliminate the name "negro" and its derivative "black" from the vocabulary and minds of the people. So, he wants to remove it from the vocabulary and even the minds of people.
Now, why does he want to remove the word "black" or "negro" from the minds of people and from the vocabulary of calling people these words? Black, without any moral quality or goodness. Evil, wicked. This is why, because it has an implication of evilness, wickedness, being at the bottom, slave. That's the type of connotation that it has when someone is taking on a name like this. So, he wants to remove it from the minds and the vocabulary of people, which you can understand that that's something that is a proper thing to do, and it's a way to, to try to uplift people if they're receptive to that type of help. Because that's the one thing that has to be there before someone can receive help is they have to be receptive to the help.
At local and national meetings of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, he repeatedly proposed resolutions to substitute "Afro-American" for "negro." Finally, in 1972, he was able to win a constitutional change of the name. So, he was able to get some wins in there. He's fighting on behalf of the people because he understands the importance of names and what they signify and how people react when they see themselves in a certain light and they identify themselves as a certain way. If you identify yourself with things that are related to black, wicked, and evil, then you have a tendency to act and to become that and to act in a way that reflects that image and that name.
The debate over names became somewhat muddied with the advent of the Black Power movement in 1966. The Black Power movement, this is one of the things that many people are proud of, and many people have their reservations about. Now, there's different perspectives on the Black Power movement. The one that is really pushed on the forefront is that it's some pride thing and it's an uplifting of people. But the other part, or the other perspective of the Black Power movement, is that it was detrimental, and what it really stood for was rebellion and also animosity towards white people.
So, this is a book here by Dr. Shelby Steele, who was an advocate of the Black Power movement, and he was involved in there during that time. And this is the other aspect of the narrative that gets hidden and it gets suppressed because this is not the narrative that most people want to hear. So, let's see what, what Dr. Shelby Steele has to say. "Our point was that Black Power would no longer come from being better than whites. It would come from not being better."
So, he's telling a story about how he's inside of a college campus, and he's with like 30 other students, and they're smoking a cigarette. And someone else is coming in there, the president's coming in there. And typically, what they would do is you would get rid of the cigarette out of respect. But he's saying, like, the Black Power movement is symbolizing, like, we don't need to do any of those things. I'm going to stand my ground. It's not about us trying to be better than whites. It's about not trying to be better than whites.
So, what's going to happen is, is we're doing the opposite. And at the heart of this anger was an empowering feeling of license, the feeling that being black released me from the usual obligation to common decency and decorum. And it's to show themselves to be basically opposed to everything that's white, and what they deem to be white, and what they deem to be common decencies and courtesies. And he goes a lot more into the book. It's a phenomenal book, and it delves into the mindset, the underlying agenda behind a lot of people who were going into the Black Power movement. And essentially, it came down to the victimizing and becoming a victim and using that as a way to have leverage over white people, playing the race card, and doing all these types of things, right? It was another power leverage that black people found and used to their advantage.
The debate over names became somewhat muddied with the advent of the Black Power movement in 1966. The leaders of the movement forcefully rejected "negro" but substituted "black" instead of "Afro-American" or "African-American." So, who are the leaders of the Black Power movement? Well, one of the leaders is Kwame Ture. And they're choosing the name "black" because it's a symbol. It shows the polarizing opposites between you and us, them and they, black and white, right? That's why they're not going to go with the term "African-American" or "Afro-American." It's a symbolic movement. It's a heavy message, and it shows we stand on this side, you stand on that side.
Now, we have two psychological battles that we're fighting against white folk. We won one. They told us that we should hate Malcolm X. We dumped that, thank God. Now, the second battle that we're now fighting is whether or not we will have the right to use the terms, to decide how our movement is going to go. They don't want us to use Black Power. I got news for them. Because what Black Power was supposed to do was to start bringing black people together under a slogan that everyone understood. But what, in fact, it's done is organized white people and their negro allies, reinforcing what the actual words really stand for, with black meaning evil and wicked and doing everything that's degrading, and white being something that seemed to be decency and, um, and in order and righteous. That's why Shelby Steele says that they were doing things that were against common decencies. It gave them that type of power to do that. You felt the need that I don't need to do any of that stuff. That's for white people.
This is where all these attitudes are heavily getting ingrained in people, and the youth took on to this. They're the ones who really, really took on to this, and those are the ones later on who you come to see who still hold on to it today. Some of the older ones who still think that they're back in the 1960s era, still fighting that fight, still with that belief. Those are some of the gatekeepers of leaving the black identity, right? So, the Black Power movement was a hindrance to Richard B. Moore and other people that were on that side to kind of progressing certain people in certain areas.
During subsequent years, the struggle became somewhat disappointing for more. "Black" prevailed, despite his cogent argument that terms designating color, whether the English term "black" or the Portuguese term "negro," were basically of the same derivation and needed to be replaced by a word designating land, history, and culture. So, you can see how this goes.
Now, eventually, what happened? That Black Power thing, "black" took on its own identity. It smothered out just about everything. You have some people who may claim to be African-Americans, but many people, most people, are going to say that "black" took on an identity and it became fully mature starting all the way 500 years ago and then fully maturing all the way up until now. And it's its own essence, own being, has a group mind in there. It creates within that context of being black, black music, black restaurants, black financial groups, black entertainment. You've got a lot of things that are wrapped around that concept of black, which is what cultures do once they begin to develop. They start to create those things like any other culture.
So, what happens is, we begin to realize that because it's such a strong power and it's such a stronghold and it's a life of its own, that there's no way that you can change that mass mind. It is what it is. And so, when you're thinking about it and you remove yourself emotionally and you can, and you think strategically, what happens is you begin to come to an understanding that because that cannot be changed in there, if you don't have the same morals, values, standards, objectives, and goals as that group mind does, the only logical thing that you can do from there is to remove yourself from that identity because that identity is too strong. The stronghold is too strong.
And some people, you may understand it if you have children, if you're from a middle-class background, especially middle-class or upper-middle-class background, and you'll see the kids, once they know that they identify with black, and you go into the group mind of what black is, it'll start to grab and gravitate those children to that to those customs. And many of them will take on customs that they were not raised with.
So, what we did was remove ourselves from that identity and doing what free people have always done throughout history when objectives and goals and standards and morals don't align because these things are irreconcilable. The only thing you can do is divide and you separate. And they all, like all people have always done, they've created their own culture and identity. And from there, people who fall in line with those identities and that moral and those standards, then you come along and you create your own mass mind within there. And then you have to leave people to their own doings because one thing I've come to understand as well is that people have a desire, and many times their desires don't align with what people think that their desires should be. Say, I want someone to do something, they may have a totally different set of desires.
I come to understand that there are people who actually want to do the gang banging thing. They actually want to do the rapping about the murdering thing, rapping about killing people, drug dealing. They want to do those things. They want to be in dysfunction. They want to do those things despite what everyone else may say that they should want. And you know what someone wants by their actions because someone can tell you what they want all day, but what do the actions reflect? The actions reflect your dominant desires, what you really want to do the most. And when you look into the black community, you see what the dominant desire is, it shows you. And people who try to get out, it's a hard time because there's a lot of gatekeepers. And it sucks other people in there who don't even come from that type of culture, but because they've been taught to identify, now they can get sucked in there into the pit.
And so, it's been a long fight with the identity and this name. And so, like I said, we've just understood that that's something that you have to let people do. You have to let them be how they are until they come to a point where they say, "We don't want to be that anymore," then they can become something else. Now, for someone whose values and morals and objectives align with what the community stands for, with what that community, the black community, stands for, then they're in the right place because there's nothing wrong with that community. It's just that if you don't have those same objectives and standards, then you're going to think something's wrong with it. But you, but in that society, there's nothing wrong with that, right? Because right and wrong is also a subjective thing in many instances. It's someone's opinion, right? If somebody wants to build a culture around doing the twerking and rapping about derogatory things, you can do that because, in that person's mind, they may be doing the right thing, and who's to convince them that they're not?
But once you decide that, okay, this is not for me, that's what we did. We decided this is not for us. This is not for us. We decided to remove ourselves from it and not to be associated with any of the black identity.