Citation: 16 Soc. Probs. 393 1968-1969

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SOCIAL PROBLEMS FORMAT CHANGE

BEGINNING WITH THE SUMMER, 1969 ISSUE

Contributors should consult current issues of the American SociologicalReview for samples of the new form.

INTERNAL COLONIALISM AND GHETTO REVOLT'

ROBERT BLAUNER

University of California, Berkeley

The paper explores the thesis that white-Black relations in America are essentiallythose of colonizer and colonized. The concept of colonization as a process is dis-tinguished from colonialism as a social system in order to isolate the commonfeatures in the experience and situation of Afro-Americans and the colonial peoples.Three contemporary social movements are analyzed in this light: urban riots,cultural nationalism, and ghetto control politics. Some dilemmas within these move-ments are considered in terms of the ambiguities that exist when colonization hastaken place outside of a colonial political context. The essay concludes with a briefdiscussion of the white role in ghettoization and decolonization.

It is becoming almost fashionable toanalyze American racial conflict todayin terms of the colonial analogy. I shall

1 This is a revised version of a paperdelivered at the University of CaliforniaCentennial Program, "Studies in Violence,"Los Angeles, June 1, 1968. For criticismsand ideas that have improved an earlierdraft, I am indebted to Robert Wood, Lin-coln Bergman, and Gary Marx. As a goodcolonialist I have probably restated (read:stolen) more ideas from the writings ofKenneth Clark, Stokely Carmichael, FrantzFanon, and especially such contributors tothe Black Panther Party (Oakland) news-paper as Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, El-dridge Cleaver, and Kathleen Cleaver thanI have appropriately credited or generatedmyself. In self-defense I should state thatI began working somewhat independentlyon a colonial analysis of American racerelations in the fall of 1965; see my "White-wash Over Watts: The Failure of theMcCone Report," Trans-action, 3 (March-April, 1966), pp. 3-9, 54.

argue in this paper that the utility ofthis perspective depends upon a dis-tinction between colonization as aprocess and colonialism as a social,economic, and political system. It is theexperience of colonization that Afro-Americans share with many of the non-white people of the world. But thissubjugation has taken place in a societalcontext that differs in important re-spects from the situation of "classicalcolonialism." In the body of this essayI shall look at some major develop-ments in Black protest-the urban riots,cultural nationalism, and the movementfor ghetto control-as collective re-sponses to colonized status. Viewingour domestic situation as a special formof colonization outside a context of acolonial system will help explain someof the dilemmas and ambiguities withinthese movements.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The present crisis in American lifehas brought about changes in social per-spectives and the questioning of longaccepted frameworks. Intellectuals andsocial scientists have been forced by thepressure of events to look at old defini-tions of the character of our society, therole of racism, and the workings ofbasic institutions. The depth and vola-tility of contemporary racial conflictchallenge sociologists in particular toquestion the adequacy of theoreticalmodels by which we have explainedAmerican race relations in the past.

For a long time the distinctiveness ofthe Negro situation among the ethnicminorities was placed in terms of color,and the systematic discrimination thatfollows from our deep-seated racialprejudices. This was sometimes calledthe caste theory, and while provocative,it missed essential and dynamic fea-tures of American race relations. In thepast ten years there has been a tendencyto view Afro-Americans as anotherethnic group not basically different inexperience from previous ethnics andwhose "immigration" condition in theNorth would in time follow their up-ward course. The inadequacy of thismodel is now dear-even the KernerReport devotes a chapter to criticizingthis analogy. A more recent (thoughhardly new) approach views the es-sence of racial subordination in eco-nomic class terms: Black people as anunderclass are to a degree specially ex-ploited and to a degree economicallydispensable in an automating society.Important as are economic factors, thepower of race and racism in Americacannot be sufficiently explained throughclass analysis. Into this theory vacuumsteps the model of internal colonialism.Problematic and imprecise as it is, itgives hope of becoming a frameworkthat can integrate the insights of caste

and racism, ethnicity, culture, and eco-nomic exploitation into an overall con-ceptual scheme. At the same time, thedanger of the colonial model is theimposition of an artificial analogywhich might keep us from facing up tothe fact (to quote Harold Cruse) that"the American black and white socialphenomenon is a uniquely new worldthing."

2

During the late 1950's, identificationwith African nations and other colonialor formerly colonized peoples grew inimportance among Black militants. Asa result the U. S. was increasingly seenas a colonial power and the concept ofdomestic colonialism was introducedinto the political analysis and rhetoricof militant nationalists. During thesame period Black social theorists begandeveloping this frame of reference forexplaining American realities. As earlyas 1962, Cruse characterized race rela-tions in this country as "domestic colo-nialism." 4 Three years later in DarkGhetto, Kenneth Clark demonstratedhow the political, economic, and socialstructure of Harlem was essentiallythat of a colony.2 Finally in 1967, afull-blown elaboration of "internal co-lonialism" provided the theoretical

2 Harold Cruse, Rebellion or Revolution,New York: 1968, p. 214.

8 Nationalism, including an orientationtoward Africa, is no new development. Ithas been a constant tendency within Afro-American politics. See Cruse, ibid, esp.chaps. 5-7.

4 This was six years before the publica-tion of The Crisis of the Negro intellectual,New York: Morrow, 1968, which broughtCruse into prominence. Thus the 1962article was not widely read until its re-printing in Cruse's essays, Rebellion orRevolution, op. cit.

5 Kenneth Clark, Dark Ghetto, NewYork: Harper and Row, 1965. Clark'sanalysis first appeared a year earlier inYouth in the Ghetto, New York: HaryouAssociates, 1964.

Internal Colonialism

framework for Carmichael and Hamil-ton's widely read Black Power.6 Thefollowing year the colonial analogygained currency and new "respectabil-ity" when Senator McCarthy habituallyreferred to Black Americans as a colo-nized people during his campaign.While the rhetoric of internal colonial-ism was catching on, other social scien-tists began to raise questions about itsappropriateness as a scheme of analysis.

The colonial analysis has been re-jected as obscurantist and misleadingby scholars who point to the signifcantdifferences in history and social-politi-cal conditions between our domesticpatterns and what took place in Africaand India. Colonialism traditionally re-fers to the establishment of dominationover a geographically external politicalunit, most often inhabited by peopleof a different race and culture, wherethis domination is political and eco-nomic, and the colony exists subordi-nated to and dependent upon themother country. Typically the colo-nizers exploit the land, the raw mate-rials, the labor, and other resources ofthe colonized nation; in addition a for-mal recognition is given to the differ-ence in power, autonomy, and politicalstatus, and various agencies are set upto maintain this subordination. Seem-ingly the analogy must be stretchedbeyond usefulness if the American ver-sion is to be forced into this model.For here we are talking about grouprelations within a society; the mothercountry---colony separation in geo-graphy is absent. Though whites cer-tainly colonized the territory of theoriginal Americans, internal coloniza-tion of Afro-Americans did not involvethe settlement of whites in any land

6 Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamil-ton, Black Power, New York: Random,1967.

that was unequivocably Black. And un-like the colonial situation, there hasbeen no formal recognition of differingpower since slavery was abolished out-side the South. Classic colonialism in-volved the control and exploitation ofthe majority of a nation by a minorityof outsiders. Whereas in America thepeople who are oppressed were them-selves originally outsiders and are anumerical minority.

This conventional critique of "inter-nal colonialism" is useful in pointingto the differences between our domesticpatterns and the overseas situation. Butin its bold attack it tends to lose sightof common experiences that have beenhistorically shared by the most subju-gated racial minorities in America andnon-white peoples in some other partsof the world. For understanding themost dramatic recent developments onthe race scene, this common core ele-ment-which I shall call colonization-may be more important than the un-deniable divergences between the twocontexts.

The common features ultimately re-late to the fact that the classical colo-nialism of the imperialist era andAmerican racism developed out of thesame historical situation and reflected acommon world economic and powerstratification. The slave trade for themost part preceded the imperialist par-tition and economic exploitation ofAfrica, and in fact may have been anecessary prerequisite for colonial con-quest-since it helped deplete and pac-ify Africa, undermining the resistanceto direct occupation. Slavery contri-buted one of the basic raw materialsfor the textile industry which providedmuch of the capital for the West's in-dustrial development and need for eco-nomic expansionism. The essential con-dition for both American slavery and

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

European colonialism was the powerdomination and the technological su-periority of the Western world in itsrelation to peoples of non-Western andnon-white origins. This objective su-premacy in technology and militarypower buttressed the West's sense ofcultural superiority, laying the basis forracist ideologies that were elaboratedto justify control and exploitation ofnon-white people. Thus because classi-cal colonialism and America's internalversion developed out of a similar bal-ance of technological, cultural, andpower relations, a common process ofsocial oppression characterized theracial patterns in the two contexts-despite the variation in political andsocial structure.

There appear to be four basic com-ponents of the colonization complex.The first refers to how the racialgroup enters into the dominant society(whether colonial power or not). Co-lonization begins with a forced, invol-untary entry. Second, there is an impacton the culture and social organizationof the colonized people which is morethan just a result of such "natural"processes as contact and acculturation.The colonizing power carries out apolicy which constrains, transforms, ordestroys indigenous values, orientations,and ways of life. Third, colonizationinvolves a relationship by which mem-bers of the colonized group tend to beadministered by representatives of thedominant power. There is an experi-ence of being managed and manipu-lated by outsiders in terms of ethnicstatus.

A final fundament of colonization isracism. Racism is a principle of socialdomination by which a group seen asinferior or different in terms of allegedbiological characteristics is exploited,controlled, and oppressed socially and

psychically by a superordinate group.Except for the marginal case of Jap-anese imperialism, the major examplesof colonialism have involved the sub-jugation of non-white Asian, African,and Latin American peoples by whiteEuropean powers. Thus racism hasgenerally accompanied colonialism. Raceprejudice can exist without coloniza-tion-the experience of Asian-Ameri-can minorities is a case in point-butracism as a system of domination is partof the complex of colonization.

The concept of colonization stressesthe enormous fatefulness of the his-torical factor, namely the manner inwhich a minority group becomes a partof the dominant society. 7 The crucialdifference between the colonized Amer-icans and the ethnic immigrant minori-ties is that the latter have always beenable to operate fairly competitivelywithin that relatively open section ofthe social and economic order becausethese groups came voluntarily in searchof a better life, because their move-ments in society were not administra-tively controlled, and because theytransformed their culture at their ownpace-giving up ethnic values and in-stitutions when it was seen as a desir-able exchange for improvements insocial position.

In present-day America, a major de-vice of Black colonization is the power-less ghetto. As Kenneth Clark describesthe situation:

Ghettoes are the consequence of the im-position of external power and the in-stitutionalization of powerlessness. In thisrespect, they are in fact social, political,

7 As Eldridge Cleaver reminds us, "Blackpeople are a stolen people held in a colonialstatus on stolen land, and any analysiswhich does not acknowledge the colonialstatus of black people cannot hope to dealwith the real problem." "The Land Ques-tion," Ramparts, 6 (May, 1968), p. 51.

Internal Colonialism

educational, and above all--economiccolonies. Those confined within the ghettowalls are subject peoples. They are vic-tims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity,guilt and fear of their masters....

The community can best be describedin terms of the analogy of a powerlesscolony. Its political leadership is divided,and all but one or two of its politicalleaders are shortsighted and dependentupon the larger political power structure.Its social agencies are financially pre-carious and dependent upon sources ofsupport outside the community. Itschurches are isolated or dependent. Itseconomy is dominated by small businesseswhich are largely owned by absenteeowners, and its tenements and other realproperty are also owned by absentee land-lords.

Under a system of centralization, Har-lem's schools are controlled by forcesoutside of the community. Programs andpolicies are supervised and determined byindividuals who do not live in the com-munity . . .8

Of course many ethnic groups inAmerica have lived in ghettoes. Whatmake the Black ghettoes an expressionof colonized status are three specialfeatures. First, the ethnic ghettoes arosemore from voluntary choice, both inthe sense of the choice to immigrate toAmerica and the decision to live amongone's fellow ethnics. Second, the im-migrant ghettoes tended to be a oneand two generation phenomenon; theywere actually way-stations in the pro-cess of acculturation and assimilation.When they continue to persist as in thecase of San Francisco's Chinatown, it isbecause they are big business for theethnics themselves and there is a newstream of immigrants. The Blackghetto on the other hand has been amore permanent phenomenon, althoughsome individuals do escape it. But mostrelevant is the third point. Europeanethnic groups like the Poles, Italians,

8 Youth in the Ghetto, op. cit., pp. 10-11; 79-80.

and Jews generally only experienceda brief period, often less than a genera-tion, during which their residentialbuildings, commercial stores, and otherenterprises were owned by outsiders.The Chinese and Japanese faced handi-caps of color prejudice that were al-most as strong as the Blacks faced, butvery soon gained control of their in-ternal communities, because their tra-ditional ethnic culture and social or-ganization had not been destroyed byslavery and internal colonization. ButAfro-Americans are distinct in theextent to which their segregated com-munities have remained controlled eco-nomically, politically, and administra-tively from the outside. One indicatorof this difference is the estimate thatthe "income of Chinese-Americansfrom Chinese-owned businesses is inproportion to their numbers 45 timesas great as the income of Negroes fromNegro owned businesses." 9 But whatis true of business is also true for theother social institutions that operatewithin the ghetto. The educators, po-licemen, social workers, politicians, andothers who administer the affairs ofghetto residents are typically whiteswho live outside the Black community.Thus the ghetto plays a strategic roleas the focus for the administration byoutsiders which is also essential to thestructure of overseas colonialism.10

9 N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan, Beyondthe Melting Pot, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T.,1963, p. 37.

10 "When we speak of Negro socialdisabilities under capitalism, . we referto the fact that he does not own anything-even what is ownable in his own commu-nity. Thus to fight for black liberation is tofight for his right to own. The Negro ispolitically compromised today because heowns nothing. He has little voice in theaffairs of state because he owns nothing.The fundamental reason why the Negrobourgeois-democratic revolution has been

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

The colonial status of the Negrocommunity goes beyond the issue ofownership and decision-making withinBlack neighborhoods. The Afro-Ameri-can population in most cities has verylittle influence on the power structureand institutions of the larger metro-polis, despite the fact that in numericalterms, Blacks tend to be the most size-able of the various interest groups. Arecent analysis of policy-making inChicago estimates that "Negroes reallyhold less than 1 percent of the effectivepower in the Chicago metropolitanarea. [Negroes are 20 percent of CookCounty's population.] Realistically thepower structure of Chicago is hardlyless white than that of Mississippi.""

Colonization outside of a traditionalcolonial structure has its own specialconditions. The group culture and socialstructure of the colonized in America isless developed; it is also less autono-mous. In addition, the colonized area numerical minority, and furthermorethey are ghettoized more totally and

aborted is because American capitalism hasprevented the development of a black classof capitalist owners of institutions and eco-nomic tools. To take one crucial example,Negro radicals today are severely hamperedin their tasks of educating the black masseson political issues because Negroes do notown any of the necessary means of propa-ganda and communication. The Negro ownsno printing presses, he has no stake in thenetworks of the means of communication.Inside his own communities he does notown the house he lives in, the property helives on, nor the wholesale and retailsources from which he buys his commodi-ties. He does not own the edifices in whichhe enjoys culture and entertainment or inwhich he socializes. In capitalist society, anindividual or group that does not own any-thing is powerless." H. Cruse, "Behind theBlack Power Slogan," in Cruse, Rebellionor Revolution, op. cit., pp. 238-39.

11 Harold M. Baron, "Black Powerless-ness in Chicago," Trans-action, 6 (Nov.,1968), pp. 27-33.

are more dispersed than people underclassic colonialism. Though these reali-ties affect the magnitude and directionof response, it is my basic thesis thatthe most important expressions of pro-test in the Black community during therecent years reflect the colonized statusof Afro-America. Riots, programs ofseparation, politics of community con-trol, the Black revolutionary move-ments, and cultural nationalism eachrepresent a different strategy of attackon domestic colonialism in America.Let us now examine some of thesemovements.

RIOT OR REVOLT?

The so-called riots are being increas-ingly recognized as a preliminary ifprimitive form of mass rebellion againsta colonial status. There is still a ten-dency to absorb their meaning withinthe conventional scope of assimilation-integration politics: some commentatorsstress the material motives involved inlooting as a sign that the rioters wantto join America's middle-class affluencejust like everyone else. That motivesare mixed and often unconscious, thatBlack people want good furniture andtelevision sets like whites is beside thepoint. The guiding impulse in mostmajor outbreaks has not been integra-tion with American society, but an at-tempt to stake out a sphere of controlby moving against that society and de-stroying the symbols of its oppression.

In my critique of the McCone reportI observed that the rioters were assert-ing a claim to territoriality, an unor-ganized and rather inchoate attempt togain control over their community or"turf.''12 In succeeding disorders alsothe thrust of the action has been theattempt to clear out an alien presence,

12 R. Blauner, "Whitewash Over Watts,"op. cit.

Internal Colonialism

white men and officials, rather than adrive to kill whites as in a conventionalrace riot. The main attacks have beendirected at the property of white busi-ness men and at the police who operatein the Black community "like an armyof occupation" protecting the interestsof outside exploiters and maintainingthe domination over the ghetto by thecentral metropolitan power structure.13

The Kerner report misleads when itattempts to explain riots in terms of in-tegration: "What the rioters appear tobe seeking was fuller participation inthe social order and the material bene-fits enjoyed by the majority of Ameri-can citizens. Rather than rejecting theAmerican system, they were anxious toobtain a place for themselves in it.''14More accurately, the revolts pointed toalienation from this system on the partof many poor and also not-so-poorBlacks. The sacredness of private prop-erty, that unconsciously accepted bul-wark of our social arrangements, wasrejected; people who looted apparentlywithout guilt generally remarked thatthey were taking things that "really be-longed" to them anyway.15 Obviously

13 "The police function to support andenforce the interests of the dominant po-litical, social, and economic interests of thetown" is a statement made by a formerpolice scholar and official, according to A.Neiderhoffer, Behind the Shield, New York:Doubleday, 1967 as cited by Gary T. Marx,"Civil Disorder and the Agents of Control,"journal of Social Issues, forthcoming.

14 Report of the National Advisory Com-mission on Civil Disorders, N.Y.: Bantam,March, 1968, p. 7.

15 This kind of attitude has a* long his-tory among American Negroes. Duringslavery, Blacks used the same rationalizationto justify stealing from their masters. Ap-propriating things from the master wasviewed as "taking part of his property forthe benefit of another part; whereas steal-ing referred to appropriating somethingfrom another slave, an offense that was not

the society's bases of legitimacy andauthority have been attacked. Law andorder has long been viewed as thewhite man's law and order by Afro-Americans; but now this perspectivecharacteristic of a colonized people isout in the open. And the Kerner Re-port's own data question how wellghetto rebels are buying the system:In Newark only 33 percent of self-reported rioters said they thought thiscountry was worth fighting for in theevent of a major war; in the Detroitsample the figure was 55 percentlO

One of the most significant conse-quences of the process of colonizationis a weakening of the colonized's in-dividual and collective will to resist hisoppression. It has been easier to containand control Black ghettoes becausecommunal bonds and group solidarityhave been weakened through divisionsamong leadership, failures of organiza-tion, and a general disspiritment that ac-companies social oppression. The riotsare a signal that the will to resist hasbroken the mold of accommodation. Insome cities as in Watts they also repre-sented nascent movements toward com-munity identity. In several riot-tornghettoes the outbursts have stimulatednew organizations and movements. Ifit is true that the riot phenomenonof 1964-68 has passed its peak, itshistorical import may be more for the"internal" organizing momentum gen-erated than for any profound "exter-nal" response of the larger societyfacing up to underlying causes.

Despite the appeal of Frantz Fanonto young Black revolutionaries, Americais not Algeria. It is difficult to foreseehow riots in our cities can play a role

condoned." Kenneth Stampp, The PeculiarInstitution, Vintage, 1956, p. 127.

16 Report of the National Advisory Com-mission on Civil Disorders, op. cit., p. 178.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

equivalent to rioting in the colonialsituation as an integral phase in amovement for national liberation. In1968 some militant groups (for ex-ample, the Black Panther Party in Oak-land) had concluded that ghetto riotswere self-defeating of the lives andinterests of Black people in the presentbalance of organization and gunpower,though they had served a role to stimu-late both Black consciousness and whiteawareness of the depths of racial crisis.Such militants have been influential in"cooling" their communities during pe-riods of high riot potential. Theoreti-cally oriented Black radicals see riotsas spontaneous mass behavior whichmust be replaced by a revolutionaryorganization and consciousness. Butdespite the differences in objective con-ditions, the violence of the 1960'sseems to serve the same psychic func-tion, assertions of dignity and man-hood for young Blacks in urbanghettoes, as it did for the colonized ofNorth Africa described by Fanon andMemmi.1

7

CULTURAL NATIONALISM

Cultural conflict is generic to thecolonial relation because colonizationinvolves the domination of Westerntechnological values over the morecommunal cultures of non-Westernpeoples. Colonialism played havoc withthe national integrity of the peoples itbrought under its sway. Of course, alltraditional cultures are threatened byindustrialism, the city, and moderniza-tion in communication, transportation,health, and education. What is specialare the political and administrative de-cisions of colonizers in managing and

17 Frantz Fanon, Wretched ot the Earth,New York: Grove, 1963; Albert Memmi,The Colonizer and the Colonized, Boston:Beacon, 1967.

controlling colonized peoples. Theboundaries of African colonies, for ex-ample, were drawn to suit the politicalconveniences of the European nationswithout regard to the social organiza-tion and cultures of African tribes andkingdoms. Thus Nigeria as blocked outby the British included the Yorubas andthe Ibos, whose civil war today is aresiduum of the colonialist's disrespectfor the integrity of indigenous cultures.

The most total destruction of culturein the colonization process took placenot in traditional colonialism but inAmerica. As Frazier stressed, the in-tegral cultures of the diverse Africanpeoples who furnished the slave tradewere destroyed because slaves from dif-ferent tribes, kingdoms, and linguisticgroups were purposely separated tomaximize domination and control. Thuslanguage, religion, and national loyal-ties were lost in North America muchmore completely than in the Caribbeanand Brazil where slavery developedsomewhat differently. Thus on this keypoint America's internal colonizationhas been more total and extreme thansituations of classic colonialism. Forthe British in India and the Europeanpowers in Africa were not able-asoutnumbered minorities-to destroy thenational and tribal cultures of the colo-nized. Recall that American slaverylasted 250 years and its racist aftermathanother 100. Colonial dependency inthe case of British Kenya and FrenchAlgeria lasted only 77 and 125 yearsrespectively. In the wake of this moredrastic uprooting and destruction ofculture and social organization, muchmore powerful agencies of social, po-litical, and psychological dominationdeveloped in the American case.

Colonial control of many peoples inhabit-ing the colonies was more a goal than afact, and at Independence there were

Internal Colonialism

undoubtedly fairly large numbers of Afri-cans who had never seen . colonial ad-ministrator. The gradual process of exten-sion of control from the administrativecenter on the African coast contrastssharply with the total uprooting involvedin the slave trade and the totalitarianaspects of slavery in the United States.Whether or not Elkins is correct in treat-ing slavery as a total institution, it un-doubtedly had a far more radical andpervasive impact on American slaves thandid colonialism on the vast majority ofAfricans.' 8

Yet a similar cultural process unfoldsin both contexts of colonialism. To theextent that they are involved in thelarger society and economy, the colo-nized are caught up in a conflict be-tween two cultures. Fanon has de-scribed how the assimilation-orientedschools of Martinique taught him toreject his own culture and Blackness infavor of Westernized, French, andwhite values.19 Both the colonizedelites under traditional colonialism andperhaps the majority of Afro-Ameri-cans today experience a parallel split inidentity, cultural loyalty, and politicalorientation. 20

The colonizers use their culture tosocialize the colonized elites (intellec-tuals, politicians, and middle class)into an identification with the colonialsystem. Because Western culture hasthe prestige, the power, and the key toopen the limited opportunity that aminority of the colonized may achieve,the first reaction seems to be an ac-

18 Robert Wood, "Colonialism in Africaand America: Some Conceptual Considera-tions," December, 1967, unpublished paper.

19 F. Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks,New York: Grove, 1967.

20 Harold Cruse has described how thesetwo themes of integration with the largersociety and identification with ethnic nation-ality have struggled within the political andcultural movements of Negro Americans.The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, op. cit.

ceptance of the dominant values. Callit brainwashing as the Black Muslimsput it; call it identifying with the ag-gressor if you prefer Freudian termi-nology; call it a natural response to thehope and belief that integration anddemocratization can really take place ifyou favor a more commonsense ex-planation, this initial acceptance intime crumbles on the realities of racismand colonialism. The colonized, seeingthat his success within colonialism is atthe expense of his group and his owninner identity, moves radically towarda rejection of the Western culture anddevelops a nationalist outlook that cele-brates his people and their traditions.As Memmi describes it:

Assimilation being abandoned, the colo-nized's liberation must be carried outthrough a recovery of self and of autono-mous dignity. Attempts at imitating thecolonizer required self-denial; the colo-nizer's rejection is the indispensible pre-lude to self-discovery. That accusing andannihilating image must be shaken off;oppression must be attacked boldly sinceit is impossible to go around it. Afterhaving been rejected for so long by thecolonizer, the day has come when it is thecolonized who must refuse the colo-nizer.21

Memmi's book, The Colonizer andthe Colonized, is based on his experi-ence as a Tunisian Jew in a marginalposition between the French and thecolonized Arab majority. The uncannyparallels between the North Africansituation he describes and the course ofBlack-white relations in our society isthe best impressionist argument I knowfor the thesis that we have a colonizedgroup and a colonizing system inAmerica. His discussion of why eventhe most radical French anti-colonialistcannot participate in the struggle ofthe colonized is directly applicable to

21 Memmi, op. cit., p. 128.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

the situation of the white liberal andradical vis-1-vis the Black movement.His portrait of the colonized is as goodan analysis of the psychology behindBlack Power and Black nationalism asanything that has been written in theU.S. Consider for example:

Considered en bloc as them, they, orthose, different from every point of view,homogeneous in a radical heterogeneity,the colonized reacts by rejecting all thecolonizers en bloc. The distinction be-tween deed and intent has no greatsignificance in the colonial situation. Inthe eyes of the colonized, all Europeansin the colonies are de facto colonizers,and whether they want to be or not, theyare colonizers in some ways. By theirprivileged economic position, by belong-ing to the political system of oppression,or by participating in an effectively nega-tive complex toward the colonized, theyare colonizers. . . They are supportersor at least unconscious accomplices of thatgreat collective aggression of Europe.2 2

The same passion which made him admireand absorb Europe shall make him asserthis differences; since those differences,after all, are within him and correctlyconstitute his true self.23

The important thing now is to rebuild hispeople, whatever be their authentic na-ture; to reforge their unity, communicatewith it, and to feel that they belong.2 4

Cultural revitalization movementsplay a key role in anti-colonial move-ments. They follow an inner necessityand logic of their own that comes fromthe consequences of colonialism ongroups and personal identities; theyare also essential to provide the solidar-ity which the political or military phaseof the anti-colonial revolution requires.In the U.S. an Afro-American culturehas been developing since slavery outof the ingredients of African world-views, the experience of bondage,

22 ibid., p. 130.23 Ibid., p. 132.24 Ibid., p. 134.

Southern values and customs, migrationand the Northern lower-class ghettoes,and most importantly, the politicalhistory of the Black population in itsstruggle against racism.235 That Afro-Americans are moving toward culturalnationalism in a period when ethnicloyalties tend to be weak (and perhapson the decline) in this country is an-other confirmation of the unique colo-nized position of the Black group. (Asimilar nationalism seems to be grow-ing among American Indians andMexican-Americans.)

THE MOVEMENT FOR GHETTO

CONTROL

The call for Black Power unites anumber of varied movements andtendencies.26 Though no clear-cut pro-gram has yet emerged, the most impor-tant emphasis seems to be the move-ment for control of the ghetto. Blackleaders and organizations are increas-

25 In another essay, I argue against thestandard sociological position that denies theexistence of an ethnic Afro-American cul-ture and I expand on the above themes. Theconcept of "Soul" is astonishingly parallelin content to the mystique of "Negritude"in Africa; the Pan-African culture move-ment has its parallel in the burgeoningBlack culture mood in Afro-American com-munities. See "Black Culture: Myth orReality" in Peter Rose, editor, AmericansProm Africa, Atherton, 1969.

26 Scholars and social commentators,Black and white alike, disagree in inter-preting the contemporary Black Powermovement. The issues concern whether thisis a new development in Black protest or anold tendency revised; whether the movementis radical, revolutionary, reformist, or con-servative; and whether this orientation isunique to Afro-Americans or essentially aBlack parallel to other ethnic group strate-gies for collective mobility. For an interest-ing discussion of Black Power as a modern-ized version of Booker T. Washington'sseparatism and economism, see HaroldCruse, Rebellion or Revolution, op. cit.,pp. 193-258.

Internal Colonialism

ingly concerned with owning and con-trolling those institutions that existwithin or impinge upon their commun-ity. The colonial model provides a keyto the understanding of this movement,and indeed ghetto control advocateshave increasingly invoked the languageof colonialism in pressing for localhome rule. The framework of anti-col-onialism explains why the struggle forpoor people's or community control ofpoverty programs has been more centralin many cities than the content of theseprograms and why it has been crucialto exclude whites from leadership po-sitions in Black organizations.

The key institutions that anti-colo-nialists want to take over or controlare business, social services, schools,and the police. Though many spokes-men have advocated the exclusion ofwhite landlords and small businessmenfrom the ghetto, this program has evi-dently not struck fire with the Blackpopulation and little concrete move-ment toward economic expropriationhas yet developed. Welfare recipientshave organized in many cities to pro-tect their rights and gain a greatervoice in the decisions that affect them,but whole communities have not yetbeen able to mount direct action againstwelfare colonialism. Thus schools andthe police seem now to be the burningissues of ghetto control politics.

During the past few years there hasbeen a dramatic shift from educationalintegration as the primary goal to thatof community control of the schools.Afro-Americans are demanding theirown school boards, with the power tohire and fire principals and teachersand to construct a curriculum whichwould be relevant to the special needsand culture style of ghetto youth.Especially active in high schools andcolleges have been Black students,

whose protests have centered on theincorporation of Black Power and Blackculture into the educational system.Consider how similar is the spirit be-hind these developments to the attitudeof the colonized North African towardEuropean education:

He will prefer a long period of educa-tional mistakes to the continuance of thecolonizer's school organization. He willchoose institutional disorder in order todestroy the institutions built by the colo-nizer as soon as possible. There we willsee, indeed a reactive drive of profoundprotest. He will no longer owe anythingto the colonizer and will have definitelybroken with him.27

Protest and institutional disorderover the issue of school control cameto a head in 1968 in New York City.The procrastination in the Albany Statelegislature, the several crippling strikescalled by the teachers union, and thealmost frenzied response of Jewish or-ganizations makes it clear that decolo-nization of education faces the resis-tance of powerful vested interests. 28

The situation is too dynamic at presentto assess probable future results. How-ever, it can be safely predicted thatsome form of school decentralizationwill be institutionalized in New York,and the movement for community con-trol of education will spread to morecities.

This movement reflects some of theproblems and ambiguities that stemfrom the situation of colonization out-side an immediate colonial context.The Afro-American community is notparallel in structure to the communitiesof colonized nations under traditional

27 Memmi, op. cit., pp. 137-138.28 For the New York school conflict see

Jason Epstein, "The Politics of School De-centralization," New York Review of Books,June 6, 1968, pp. 26-32; and "The NewYork City School Revolt," ibid., 11, no. 6,pp. 37-41.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

colonialism. The significant differencehere is the lack of fully developed in-digenous institutions besides the church.Outside of some areas of the Souththere is really no Black economy, andmost Afro-Americans are inevitablycaught up in the larger society's struc-ture of occupations, education, andmass communication. Thus the ethnicnationalist orientation which reflectsthe reality of colonization exists along-side an integrationist orientation whichcorresponds to the reality that the in-stitutions of the larger society are muchmore developed than those of the in-cipient nation. 29 As would be expectedthe movement for school control reflectsboth tendencies. The militant leaderswho spearhead such local movementsmay be primarily motivated by thedesire to gain control over the commun-ity's institutions-they are anti-colo-nialists first and foremost. Many par-ents who support them may share thisgoal also, but the majority are prob-ably more concerned about creating anew education that will enable theirchildren to "make it" in the societyand the economy as a whole-theyknow that the present school systemfails ghetto children and does not pre-pare them for participation in Ameri-can life.

There is a growing recognition thatthe police are the most crucial institu-tion maintaining the colonized statusof Black Americans. And of all estab-lishment institutions, police depart-ments probably include the highest pro-

29 This dual split in the politics andpsyche of the Black American was poeticallydescribed by Du Bois in his Souls of BlackFolk, and more recently has been insight-fully analyzed by Harold Cruse in TheCrisis of the Negro Intellectual, op. cit.Cruse has also characterized the problem ofthe Black community as that of under-development.

portion of individual racists. This is noaccident since central to the workingsof racism (an essential component ofcolonization) are attacks on the hu-manity and dignity of the subjectgroup. Through their normal routinesthe police constrict Afro-Americans toBlack neighborhoods by harassing andquestioning them when found outsidethe ghetto; they break up group3 ofyouth congregating on corners or incars without any provocation; and theycontinue to use offensive and racistlanguage no matter how many inter-group understanding seminars havebeen built into the police academy.They also shoot to kill ghetto residentsfor alleged crimes such as car theftsand running from police officers.30

Police are key agents in the powerequation as well as the drama of dehu-manization. In the final analysis theydo the dirty work for the larger systemby restricting the striking back of Blackrebels to skirmishes inside the ghetto,thus deflecting energies and attacksfrom the communities and institutions

80 A recent survey of police finds "thatin the predominantly Negro areas of severallarge cities, many of the police perceive theresidents as basically hostile, especially theyouth and adolescents. A lack of publicsupport-from citizens, from courts, andfrom laws-is the policeman's major com-plaint. But some of the public criticism canbe traced to the activities in which he en-gages day by day, and perhaps to the tonein which he enforces the "law" in theNegro neighborhoods. Most frequently heis 'called upon' to intervene in domesticquarrels and break up loitering groups. Hestops and frisks two or three times as manypeople as are carrying dangerous weaponsor are actual criminals, and almost half ofthese don't wish to cooperate with thepoliceman's efforts." Peter Rossi et al., "Be-tween Black and White-The Faces ofAmerican Institutions and the Ghetto," inSupplemental Studies for The National Ad-visory Commission on Civil Disorders, July1968, p. 114.

Internal Colonialism

of the larger power structure. In a his-torical review, Gary Marx notes thatsince the French revolution, police andother authorities have killed large num-bers of demonstrators and rioters; therebellious "rabble" rarely destroys hu-man life. The same pattern has beenrepeated in America's recent revolts. s l

Journalistic accounts appearing in thepress recently suggest that police seethemselves as defending the interests ofwhite people against a tide of Blackinsurgence; furthermore the majorityof whites appear to view "blue power"in this light. There is probably no otheropinion on which the races are as farapart today as they are on the questionof attitudes toward the police.

In many cases set off by a confronta-tion between a policeman and a Blackcitizen, the ghetto uprisings havedramatized the role of law enforce-ment and the issue of police brutality.In their aftermath, movements havearisen to contain police activity. Oneof the first was the Community AlertPatrol in Los Angeles, a method ofpolicing the police in order to keepthem honest and constrain their viola-tions of personal dignity. This was thefirst tactic of the Black Panther Partywhich originated in Oakland, perhaps

31 "In the Gordon Riots of 1780 demon-strators destroyed property and freed pris-oners, but did not seem to kill anyone, whileauthorities killed several hundred riotersand hung an additional 25. In the RebellionRiots of the French Revolution, thoughseveral hundred rioters were killed, theykilled no one. Up to the end of the Summerof 1967, this pattern had clearly been re-peated, as police, not rioters, were respon-sible for most of the more than 100 deathsthat have occurred. Similarly, in a relatedcontext, the more than 100 civil rightsmurders of recent years have been matchedby almost no murders of racist whites." G.Marx, "Civil Disorders and the Agents ofSodal Control," op. cit.

the most significant group to challengethe police role in maintaining theghetto as a colony. The Panther's laterpolicy of openly carrying guns (alegally protected right) and their in-tention of defending themselves againstpolice aggression has brought on a se-ries of confrontations with the Oaklandpolice department. All indications arethat the authorities intend to destroythe Panthers by shooting, framing up,or legally harassing their leadership-diverting the group's energies awayfrom its primary purpose of self-de-fense and organization of the Blackcommunity to that of legal defense andgaining support in the white commun-ity.

There are three major approaches to"police colonialism" that correspond toreformist and revolutionary readings ofthe situation. The most elementary andalso superficial sees colonialism in thefact that ghettoes are overwhelminglypatrolled by white rather than by Blackofficers. The proposal-supported to-day by many police departments-toincrease the number of Blacks on localforces to something like their distribu-tion in the city would then make itpossible to reduce the use of white copsin the ghetto. This reform should besupported, for a variety of obviousreasons, but it does not get to the heartof the police role as agents of coloniza-tion.

The Kerner Report documents thefact that in some cases Black policemencan be as brutal as their white counter-parts. The Report does not tell us whopolices the ghetto, but they have com-piled the proportion of Negroes on theforces of the major cities. In some citiesthe disparity is so striking that whitepolice inevitably dominate ghetto pa-trols. (In Oakland 31 percent of thepopulation and only 4 percent of the

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

police are Black; in Detroit the figuresare 39 percent and 5 percent; and inNew Orleans 41 and 4.) In othercities, however, the proportion of Blackcops is approaching the distribution inthe city: Philadelphia 29 percent and20 percent; Chicago 27 percent and 17percent.32 These figures also suggestthat both the extent and the pattern ofcolonization may vary from one cityto another. It would be useful to studyhow Black communities differ in de-gree of control over internal institu-tions as well as in economic and politi-cal power in the metropolitan area.

A second demand which gets moreto the issue is that police should livein the communities they patrol. Theidea here is that Black cops who livedin the ghetto would have to be account-able to the community; if they cameon like white cops then "the brotherswould take care of business" and maketheir lives miserable. The third or max-imalist position is based on the premisethat the police play no positive role inthe ghettoes. It calls for the withdrawalof metropolitan officers from Blackcommunities and the substitution of anautonomous indigenous force thatwould maintain order without oppres-sing the population. The precise rela-tionship between such an independentpolice, the city and county law enforce-ment agencies, a ghetto governing bodythat would supervise and finance it, and

32 Report of the National Advisory Com-mission on Civil Disorders, op. cit., p. 321.That Black officers nevertheless would makea difference is suggested by data from oneof the supplemental studies to the KernerReport. They found Negro policemen work-ing in the ghettoes considerably more sym-pathetic to the community and its socialproblems than their white counterparts.Peter Rossi et al., "Between Black andWhite- The Faces of American Institutionsin the Ghetto," op. cit., chap. 6.

especially the law itself is yet unclear.It is unlikely that we will soon facethese problems directly as they havearisen in the case of New York'sschools. Of all the programs of decolo-nization, police autonomy will be mostresisted. It gets to the heart of how thestate functions to control and containthe Black community through delegat-ing the legitimate use of violence topolice authority.

The various "Black Power" programsthat are aimed at gaining control ofindividual ghettoes-buying up prop-erty and businesses, running the schoolsthrough community boards, taking overanti-poverty programs and other socialagencies, diminishing the arbitrarypower of the police-can serve to re-vitalize the institutions of the ghettoand build up an economic, professional,and political power base. These pro-grams seem limited; we do not knowat present if they are enough in them-selves to end colonized status.8 Butthey are certainly a necessary first step.

THE ROLE OF WHITES

What makes the Kerner Report aless-than-radical document is its super-ficial treatment of racism and its reluc-tance to confront the colonized rela-tionship between Black people and thelarger society. The Report emphasizesthe attitudes and feelings that make upwhite racism, rather than the system ofprivilege and control which is the heartof the matter.84 With all its discussion

a Eldridge Cleaver has called this firststage of the anti-colonial movement com-munity liberation in contrast to a morelong-range goal of national liberation. E.Cleaver, "Community Imperialism," BlackPanther Party newspaper, 2 (May 18,1968).

84 For a discussion of this failure to dealwith racism, see Gary T. Marx, "Report ofthe National Commission: The Analysis of

Internal Colonialism

of the ghetto and its problems, it neverfaces the question of the stake thatwhite Americans have in racism andghettoization.

This is not a simple question, butthis paper should not end with theimpression that police are the majorvillains. All white Americans gainsome privileges and advantage fromthe colonization of Black communi-ties.85 The majority of whites also losesomething from this oppression anddivision in society. Serious researchshould be directed to the ways inwhich white individuals and institu-tions are tied into the ghetto. In closinglet me suggest some possible param-eters.

1. It is my guess that only a smallminority of whites make a direct eco-nomic profit from ghetto colonization.This is hopeful in that the ouster ofwhite businessmen may become politi-cally feasible. Much more significant,however, are the private and corporateinterests in the land and residentialproperty of the Black community; theirholdings and influence on urban de-cision-making must be exposed andcombated.

2. A much larger minority have oc-cupational and professional interests inthe present arrangements. The KernerCommission reports that 1.3 millionnon-white men would have to be up-graded occupationally in order to makethe Black job distribution roughly simi-lar to the white. They advocate thiswithout mentioning that 1.3 millionspecially privileged white workers

Disorder or Disorderly Analysis," 1968,unpublished paper.

8 Such a statement is easier to assertthan to document but I am attempting thelatter in a forthcoming book tentativelytitled White Racism, Black Culture, to bepublished by Little Brown, 1970.

would lose in the bargain.88 In addi-tion there are those professionals whocarry out what Lee Rainwater has calledthe "dirty work" of administering thelives of the ghetto poor: the socialworkers, the school teachers, the urbandevelopment people, and of course thepolice.8s The social problems of theBlack community will ultimately besolved only by people and organizationsfrom that community; thus the empha-sis within these professions must shifttoward training such a cadre of minor-ity personnel. Social scientists whoteach and study problems of race andpoverty likewise have an obligation toreplace themselves by bringing into thegraduate schools and college facultiesmen of color who will become the fu-ture experts in these areas. For culturaland intellectual imperialism is as realas welfare colonialism, though it iscurrently screened behind such unassail-able shibboleths as universalism and theobjectivity of scientific inquiry.

3. Without downgrading the vestedinterests of profit and profession, thereal nitty-gritty elements of the whitestake are political power and bureau-cratic security. Whereas few whiteshave much understapding of the reali-ties of race relations and ghetto life, Ithink most give tacit or at least sub-conscious support for the containmentand control of the Black population.Whereas most whites have extremelydistorted images of Black Power, many-if not most-would still be fright-ened by actual Black political power.Racial groups and identities are real inAmerican life; white Americans sense

86 Report of the National Advisory Com-mission on Civil Disorders, op. cit., pp. 253-256.

87 Lee Rainwater, "The Revolt of theDirty-Workers," Traus-action, 5 (Nov.,1967), pp. 2, 64.

SOCIAL PROBLEMS

they are on top, and they fear possiblereprisals or disruptions were power tobe more equalized. There seems to be aparanoid fear in the white psyche ofBlack dominance; the belief that Blackautonomy would mean unbridled li-cense is so ingrained that such reason-able outcomes as Black political ma-jorities and independent Black policeforces will be bitterly resisted.

On this level the major mass bul-wark of colonization is the administra-tive need for bureaucratic security sothat the middle classes can go abouttheir life and business in peace andquiet. The Black militant movement isa threat to the orderly procedures bywhich bureaucracies and suburbs man-age their existence, and I think todaythere are more people who feel a stakein conventional procedures than thereare those who gain directly fromracism. For in their fight for institu-tional control, the colonized will notplay by the white rules of the game.These administrative rules have keptthem down and out of the system;therefore they have no necessary inten-tion of 'running institutions in theimage of the white middle class.

The liberal, humanist value thatviolence is the worst sin cannot be de-fended today if one is committedsquarely against racism and for self-determination. For some violence is

almost inevitable in the decolonizationprocess; unfortunately racism in Amer-ica has been so effective that the great-est power Afro-Americans (and per-haps also Mexican-Americans) wieldtoday is the power to disrupt. If weare going to swing with these revolu-tionary times and at least respond posi-tively to the anti-colonial movement, wewill have to learn to live with conflict,confrontation, constant change, andwhat may be real or apparent chaos anddisorder.

A positive response from the whitemajority needs to be in two major di-rections at the same time. First, com-munity liberation movements should besupported in every way by pulling outwhite instruments of direct control andexploitation and substituting technicalassistance to the community when thisis asked for. But it is not enough torelate affirmatively to the nationalistmovement for ghetto control withoutat the same time radically openingdoors for full participation in the in-stitutions of the mainstream. Other-wise the liberal and radical position islittle different than the traditional seg-regationist. Freedom in the special con-ditions of American colonization meansthat the colonized must have the choicebetween participation in the larger so-ciety and in their own independentstructures.