The Groundings with My Brothers Quotes

“We were told that violence in itself is evil, and that, whatever the cause, it is unjustified morally. By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master? By what standards can we equate the violence of blacks who have been oppressed, suppressed, depressed and repressed for four centuries with the violence of white fascists? Violence aimed at the recovery of human dignity and at equality cannot be judged by the same yardstick as violence aimed at maintenance of discrimination and oppression.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“One of the major dilemmas inherent in the attempt by black people to break through the cultural aspects of white imperialism is that posed by the use of historical knowledge as a weapon in our struggle. We are virtually forced into the invidious position of proving our humanity by citing historical antecedents; and yet the evidence is too often submitted to the white racists for sanction. The white man has already implanted numerous historical myths in the minds of black peoples; and those have to be uprooted . . . It is necessary to direct our historical activity in the light of two basic principles[:]

Firstly, the effort must be directed solely towards freeing and mobilising black minds. There must be no performances to impress whites, for those whites who find themselves beside us in the firing line will be there for reasons far more profound than their exposure to African history.

Secondly, the acquired knowledge of African history must be seen as directly relevant but secondary to the concrete tactics and strategy which are necessary for our liberation. There must be no false distinctions between reflection and action . . .

If there is to be any proving of our humanity it must be by revolutionary means.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“The white world defines who is white and who is black.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“[The] association of wealth with whites and poverty with blacks is not accidental. It is the nature of the imperialist relationship that enriches the metropolis at the expense of the colony i.e. it makes the whites richer and the blacks poorer.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“It is as though no black man can see another black man except by looking through a white person. It is time we started seeing through our own eyes.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Black Power is not racially intolerant. It is the hope of the black man that he should have power over his own destinies. This is not incompatible with a multiracial society where each individual counts equally. Because the moment that power is equitably distributed among several ethnic groups, the very relevance of making the distinction between groups will be lost.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Malcolm X, our martyred brother, became the greatest threat to white power in the USA because he began to seek a broader basis for his efforts in Africa and Asia, and he was probably the first individual who was prepared to bring the race question in the US up before the UN as an issue of international importance.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Trotsky once wrote that revolution is the carnival of the masses. When we have that carnival in the West Indies, are people like us here at the university going to join the bacchanal?”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“There is the mistaken belief that black people achieved power with independence (e.g., Malaya, Jamaica, Kenya), but a black man ruling a dependent state within the imperialist system has now power. He is simply an agent of the whites in the metropolis, with an army and a police force designed to maintain the imperialist way of things in that particular colonial area.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Beauty is in the very existence of black people.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“If there is to be any proving of our humanity it must be through revolutionary means.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“A visitor from Timbuctu about 450 years ago wrote as follows: 'In Timbuctu there are numerous judges, doctors and clerics all receiving good salaries from the king. He pays great respect to men of learning. There is a great demand for books in manuscript, imported from Barbary. More profit is made from the book trade than from any other line of business.' In a city which was renowned for its trade in gold, there was more profit to be made from books than from any other line of business! In other words, learning was valued more highly than gold!”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Christ was a member of the Essene group of Jews from Egypt. Were he alive today, he would suffer from racial discrimination.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“There is nothing with which poverty coincides so absolutely as the colour black - small or large population, hot or cold climates, rich or poor in natural resources - poverty cuts across all of these factors in order to find black people.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“I'm putting it to my black brothers and sisters that the colour of our skins is the most fundamental thing about us.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Violence in the American situation is inescapable. White society is violent, white American society is particularly violent, and white American society is especially violent towards blacks.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“White slave masters used to conduct a discussion. They said, look, we have some blacks, what to do with them? Is it better to let him grow old and work for us for an extended period of time, or should we let him work for a specified period of time, work him so hard and let him die, and buy a fresh slave? And the consensus of opinion was this; take a prime African black, work him to death in five years, and you make a profit. So the system aimed at killing us out!”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“All white people are enemies until proved otherwise, and this applies to black intellectuals, all of us are enemies to the people until we prove otherwise.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“The black intellectual, the black academic, must attach himself to the activity of the black masses.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“The whites have merely selected a facet of their own culture which is outstanding - namely, the ability to bring together millions in a single political unit - and they have then used this as a universal yardstick for measuring the inherent worth of cultures and races. (The classic example of this cultural egocentricity is the statement that 'the black man never invented the wheel'.)”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Numerous reports attest to the hospitality of African communities. Within any village or chiefdom, the codes of hospitality and a spirit of charity prevented the extremes of poverty and abandonment which one finds in richer and supposedly more mature societies.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“In reconstructing African civilisations, the concern is to indicate that African social life had meaning and value, and that the African past is one with which the black man in the Americas can identify with pride.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Ancient Africa was int he mainstream of human history.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“When we look at the British Empire in the nineteenth century, we see a clear difference between white colonies and black colonies. In the white colonies like Canada and Australia, the British were giving white people their freedom and self-rule. In the black colonies of the West Indies, Africa and Asia, the British were busy taking away the political freedom of the inhabitants.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Black people must now take the offensive - if it is anyone who should suffer embarrassment, it is the whites. Did black people roast six million Jews? Who exterminated millions of indigenous inhabitants in the Americas and Australia? Who enslaved countless millions of Africans? The white capitalist cannibal has always fed on the world's black peoples. White capitalist imperialist society is profoundly and unmistakably racist.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“We have nothing to lose, for they are the capitalists. Black people could not hope to, nor do they want to, dominate the whites, but large sections of the black youth realise that they cannot shrink from fighting to demonstrate the hard way that a 10 per cent minority of 22 million cannot be treated as though they do not exist.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“White Americans would certainly argue the moral and practical necessity of their participation in the First and, particularly, the Second World War. What is curious is that thousands of black people fought and died in these wars entirely in the interest of the white man. Colonialism is the opposite of freedom and democracy, and yet black colonials fought for this against the Fascism of Hitler - it was purely in the interests of the white 'Mother Countries'. Slaves fought for American Independence and for the North in the American Civil War. Black oppressed Americans went in thousands to fight for justice in the world wars, in Korea and in Vietnam. We have fought heroically in the white men's cause. It is time to fight in our own.

Violence in the American situation is inescapable. White society is violent, white American society is particularly violent, and white American society is especially violent towards blacks.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“Certain issues are not yet clear about the final shape of society in America. Some form of co-existence with whites is the desired goal of virtually all black leaders, but it must be a society which blacks have a hand in shaping, and blacks should have power commensurate with their numbers and contribution to US development. To get that, they have to fight.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“By being made into colonials, black people lost the power which we previously had of governing our own affairs, and the aim of the white imperialist world is to see that we never regain this power.

The Congo provides an example of this situation. There was a large and well-developed Congolese empire before the white man reached Africa. The large Congolese empire of the fifteenth century was torn apart by Portuguese slave traders, and what remained of the Congo came to be regarded as one of the darkest spots in dark Africa. After regaining political independence the Congolese people settled down to their lives, and murdered both Lumumba and the aspirations of the Congolese people. Since then, paid white mercenaries have harassed the Congo. Late last year, 130 of these hired white killers were chased out of the Congo and cornered in the neighbouring African state of Burundi. The white world intervened and they have all been set free.

These are men who for months were murdering, raping, pillaging, disrupting economic production, and making a mockery of black life and black society. Yet white power said not a hair on their heads was to be touched. They did not even have to stand trial or reveal their names.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers

“The essence of white power is that it is exercised over black peoples - whether or not [black peoples] are minority of majority, whether it was a country belonging originally to whites or to blacks. It is exercised in such a way that black people have no share in that power and are, therefore, denied any say in their own destinies.”
― Walter Rodney, The Groundings with My Brothers