Unbought and Unbossed

by Shirley Chisholm

Who is it that Congress represents? Would things be different if citizens were more highly organized and better able to artic- ulate and emphasize their desires?

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When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom that profit loses.

It has begun to occur to me that liberals in Congress are not very different. They say all the right things, their hearts are in the right place, but they keep trying to do things without ever actually doing anything.

Without a deeper and more sincere commitment by some of its mem- bers, it will never be possible to get enough bodies and minds together to make the Congress of the United States more rel- evant to the times and meaningful to its constituents.

Until a problem reaches their doorsteps, they're not going to understand. They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seri- ousness of the situation home to them. Until they are threatened, why should they change a system that has been fairly beneficial for a fairly large number of people?

It is going to have to be the have-nots — the blacks, browns, reds, yellows, and whites who do not share in the good life that most Americans lead — who somehow arouse the conscience of the nation and thus create a conscience in the Congress.

The poor are more anxious about family planning than any other group. Why then do the poor keep on having large families? It is not because they are stupid or immoral. One must under- stand how many resources their poverty has deprived them of, and that chief among these is medical care and advice.

Another point is this: not only do the poor have large families, but also large families tend to be poor.

Sinking into poverty, large families tend to stay there because of the educational and social handicaps that being poor imposes. It is the fear of such a future for their children that drives many women, of every color and social stratum, except perhaps the highest, to seek abortions when contraception has failed.

they were not thinking in terms of right or wrong, they were considering only whether taking a side of the issue would help them stay in office — or in this case, whether taking a stand would help me get reelected.

They concluded that it would not help me, so it was a bad position for me to take.

I told them that no one has a right to call himself a leader unless he dares to lead. That means standing up to be counted on the side of his people, even at the risk of his political security. It means giving clear direction, so the

clandestinely

have an organization of my own, but it's not based on money or patronage or mutual aggrandizement. I can pick up a telephone and have 100 people at my house in an hour, ready to go to war. The reason is they know I am for them and will not sell them out for my own advantage. That's my personal kind of coalition politics. It will work for anyone who has enough sincerity and determination.

That's the goal: change the system. Shake it up, make it change in order for it to survive. It's not necessary to dump it, only to make it work.

Much of the hypocrisy of Americans on the subject of race seems to be unconscious. Perhaps self-deception would be a better word for it. Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.

"You have looked at us for years as different from you that you may never see us really. You don't understand because you think of us as second-class humans. We have been passive and accommodating through so many years of your insults and delays that you think the way things used to be is normal. When the good-natured, spiritual-singing boys and girls rise up against the white man and demand to be treated like he is, you are bewildered. All we want is what you want, no less and no more."

In schools they still teach about the melting pot, a turn-of- the-century idea that the United States has accepted all kinds of immigrants and turned them into Americans. Closer in- spection reveals that the white minorities are not yet melted into the society, even after two or three generations.

But before they began to blend in, they had first to raise themselves to a level fairly equal to that of the rest, economically in particular. To do so, they had to advance not as individuals but as groups. They built po- litical and economic power structures of their own within the larger society — stores, banks, businesses of all sorts, and a professional class of doctors, preachers, and teachers. Then they truly became enfranchised when they had power to wield. The history of the Kennedy family illustrates the evolution.

all Americans are the prisoners of racial prejudice. Even the civil rights crusaders were racists, in a subtle but no less destructive way. They ran the civil rights show, as they would later run the poverty show: "All right, here's what we're going to do." And their black allies believed and cooperated because they wanted so deeply to believe that it was the start of something new and wonder- ful, a gradual complete change of heart by the white majority. They were expecting a miracle, and of course no miracle hap- pened.

idea of the "ghetto." White sociologists applied this word, which had a precise meaning once in Europe, to black slum neighborhoods in this country and thereby did what intellec- tuals are noted for: they applied a label to a human problem and made it impossible to think about it. What most whites think of when they say "ghetto" is a black slum. To them, all black communities are alike — run- down, crime-ridden jungles. When blacks use the word "ghetto" they almost always prefix it with "so-called," to re- ject this white stereotype. Of course, "ghetto" originally con- tained some insight; it is only because it has come to be a loaded word that I would discard it.

it is not poverty, lack of education, and lack of will that keeps black, brown, red, and yellow Americans behind the bars of segregation.

for there to be real progress for us, we must all move ahead together, and we must do it ourselves.

Education, no doubt, is the key to long-range progress, al- though jobs and decent housing are the immediate needs.

using edu- cation as a means of continuing control over the lives of black people.

American blacks are in the position of a colonial population. They have been compelled to adopt the cultural standards and norms of their rulers in order to make any advancement whatever. But American blacks have been denied the option of a true colonized popu- lation; they have no true culture of their own to oppose to that of their exploiters, because theirs was systematically de- stroyed by the slave masters. They are uniquely vulnerable; it has been for them a choice of conform or die.

How can blacks be kept in a subordinate role forever? By using their vulnerability, the constraint they were under to conform to white values. It could best be done through the schools, to which blacks naturally flocked after the Civil War. They could be educated for service, and nothing else, and inculcated with attitudes of docility and industry.

In Malcolm X's words, "The slave-master took Tom and dressed him well, fed him well and even gave him a little edu- cation — a little education; gave him a long coat and a top hat and made all the other slaves look up to him. Then he used Tom to control them. The same strategy that was used in those days is used today."

replaced with educators who are ready to demand full equality for the oppressed races and fight for it at any cost. The days of mind-deadening "indus- trial education" and of turning out half-trained black profes- sionals to practice in the black community are not yet past, and it is time that they were. This chapter in the history of black America is another proof of the justice of black de- mands for control of their own institutions, particularly the schools. How can we trust even the most benevolent-appear- ing white, when we have seen through the years how a trap was concealed in nearly every "gift" we have been offered?

There is no longer any alternative for black Americans but to unite and fight together for their own advancement as a group. Everything else has been tried, and it has failed.

How shall that fight be waged? Must it be with bullets, bombs, and guerrilla armies? God help me if I ever decide that there is no...

There is a point at which passions as great as those that burn in the hearts of black Americans will not be frustrated any longer. If all the outlets are kept closed, they will at last burst out in a suicidal frenzy.

What are you going to do against the massive forces of the government? You can't fight this kind of a struggle with matchsticks. You are fourteen or fifteen percent of the population, with no real economic or political power. When you get through burning, won't you still have to go to the Man and ask for an apart- ment?" When I say this, they don't have an answer.

You have no program because you have no power.

Until we begin to use our brainpower to rattle this structure, they're only going to laugh.

But people had better start to understand that if this country's basic racism is not quickly and completely abolished — or at least controlled — there will be real, full-scale revolution in the streets.

Malcolm once said about freedom: "You get your freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom. Then you'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it."

Just because all the hands on the reins of power are white, it does not follow that all whites have their hands on that power.

Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other. It serves the insidious purpose of the wars in George Orwell's novel 1984. Orwell's imaginary world is a lot like the real world for black Americans today. But many of us, and most whites, have consistently refused to accept that they live in a managed so- ciety where conflict between the races is maintained and managed because it serves a purpose.

One of the functions of racism is to force black Americans to take the simplistic view that all whites are powerful, just because they are white. White Americans generally link up psychically with the statement, "We control." Blacks are supposed to connect psychically with the corollary, "Whites are in control, as we are powerless." Before we make any change in the way this country functions, which is to benefit a small ruling minority, whites and blacks will have to learn that the true statement should be "Some whites control this country and much of the world, for their own purposes."

Bradley's mistake was in reacting as a white politician would, by keeping silent. He forgot that voters, white and black, will believe things about a black candidate that they will not readily believe about a white one.

you get no breaks if you are black.

This raises the question of whether black politicians can be elected where the electorate is not solidly black. I believe the answer is yes, sometimes. But to do so they must stay aware of six points Georgia State legislator Julian Bond out- lined in the second issue of The Black Politician: 1. Social, economic, education, political and physical segregation and discrimination fill a very real need for the white majority. 2. Appeals to justice and fair play are outmoded and useless when power, financial gain and prestige are at stake. 3. Positions of segregation and discrimination will be adhered to until change is forced through coercion, threats, power or violence. 4. Initiative for black political organization and education must come from within the Negro community and must be sustained on a day-to-day basis. 5. The geographical distribution of Negroes makes Negro- white coalitions desirable, but only when based on racial self-interest and genuine equality between the coalescing groups. 6. Racial self-interest, race consciousness and racial solidarity must always be paramount in the words and deeds of blacks in politics; when self-interest is forgotten, organized racism will continue to dominate and frustrate the best-organized actions of any black political unit, and leave it powerless and defenseless.

freedom struggle to advance in the political arena, black politicians have to accept their blackness. They have to form an ideological base from which to operate, and that base has to be founded on their color.

the most disenfranchised and exploited minority in this country is still its women.

three basic elements of political action — registration, financing, and campaigning. Without these three foundations, successful political activity is im- possible no matter how sophisticated its theoretical basis.

Malcolm defined it succinctly — the ballot or the bullet.

the main reason the war on poverty was lost was a failing that was built into it. The antipoverty programs were designed by white middle-class intellectuals who had no experience of being poor, despised, and discriminated against.

They looked at the condition of the poor and made their diagnosis: lack of opportunity. All the other problems of the have-nots in our society — hunger, ignorance, crime, disease — were seen to be caused by the fact that when poor people tried to reach out for socially acceptable goals, they found their aspirations blocked.