Other Voices, Other Strategies

JESSE JACKSON'S efforts through Operation Breadbasket provide one approach and one philosophy for change. Here are three other strategies from eloquent and thoughtful black spokesmen for different elements of the increasingly local, increasingly specialized black struggle. TIME Correspondent Wallace Terry interviewed the three men, whose views span the spectrum. They were:

JULIAN BOND, 30, one of eight blacks elected to the Georgia house of representatives in 1965. None had served there since Reconstruction. He was the first black to be nominated for Vice President at a national-party convention. That happened at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968; Bond withdrew because he was too young to qualify. He has spoken widely since then, and is one of the best-known black politicians in the U.S. A militant activist, but not a revolutionary, he represents those blacks seeking to influence the nation through the existing governmental system.

BOBBY SEALE, 33, a founder and chairman of the Black Panther party and one of the original defendants in the Chicago conspiracy trial until separated for disrupting the courtroom. Judge Julius Hoffman declared a mistrial in Scale's case and sentenced him to four years for contempt. He was recently extradited from California to Connecticut, where he faces charges for the kidnaping and murder of another Panther. The most radical of the three, he seeks an interracial revolution that would create a Marxist-styled socialistic form of government in the U.S. He is convinced that blacks can never achieve their rights under the present system.

WHITNEY YOUNG JR., 48, the executive director of the National Urban League since 1961 and author of an editorial column, "To Be Equal," which appears in 93 U.S. newspapers weekly. The most traditionally moderate of the three, Young seeks to work with white leaders in business and government, harnessing white resources to advance the black cause.

Each of the three, interviewed separately by Terry, was asked an identical set of questions regarding the next decade in race relations. These are excerpts from their answers.

Where does the black American go from here in his drive for a racially equal society? What should he do?

Bond: We should develop greater unity in the black community. There ought to be at least a community-wide consensus of what ought to be done, politically, socially, economically and educationally. In Atlanta, we're going to have two black candidates running in the same congressional district. Two black candidates can only hurt the prospect of one's being elected.

Young: Any further riots will be met with swift massive law enforcement, so riots as a possible tool quickly outlived their usefulness. There are 'three or four viable techniques. There is economic power, which can be mobilized to reward one's friends and punish one's enemies. There is brain power, where one can, through sheer competence, move into strategic places in the Establishment and from that vantage point have an influence on policy. And there is political power. Economic and brain power are both the best long-range instruments. The political can be mobilized immediately, and therein lies the hope for rapid change.

Seale: Black people, brothers and sisters in this country, have to move to a level of revolutionary struggle in terms of what we understand to be the true enemy, the enemy who perpetuates tyranny and oppression, poverty and the wretched conditions that we're subjected to in the black community. This enemy, as Eldridge [Cleaver] always puts it, is at three levels of oppression: the bigtime, tycooning, avaricious businessmen, the lying, demagogic, tricky politicians, and the fascist pig cops, militia, and pig agents who work for the avaricious, demagogic ruling class. Black people's direction should be to wage a relentless revolutionary struggle against the three levels of oppression. But it can't be handled alone by blacks. We need alliances with those whose own self-interest is to seek communities free of disorders.

What do you think will happen in the next decade to the black drive for a racially equal society?

Bond: I tend to be pessimistic. While income for blacks has been increasing, it has not been increasing apace with income for whites. The gap is getting wider. I think that's going to continue. The physical aspects of poverty may be eliminated in the next several decades. Slum housing may disappear. Then people will find it easier to ignore poverty because it won't be an eyesore.

Politically, you're going to see many more black elected city officials. Baltimore could have a black mayor. So could Detroit, Newark, Los Angeles and Kansas City. We're coming into politics the same way the Irish did. The Irish used politics to lift themselves up as a group, controlling New York at one time, Boston at another. Now, the city itself is just not a healthy animal any more. So we are taking it over at a time when no one wants it. We are seizing on a dead horse. At best it is a mixed blessing.

Southern black people are going to become more and more political on a local level. You're going to see more and more black people running for public office. In Northern communities the black population is going to be farther away from any accommodation with the white community. I don't think you will see riots on the scale of Watts, Detroit and Newark. The police forces have too many armaments, like helicopters and tanks that shoot through whole rows of buildings. The techniques learned in Viet Nam are being brought back to this country, ready for use against the local insurgents. You will see incidents of terror from the black community, aimed at property--the physical manifestations of oppression in the black community--like a savings and loan institution that has been particularly vicious in its practices. But the black community has discovered that the percentage in a riot, although it is a very fine political expression of discontent, is a losing one. The only loss is a loss to us.

Young: I don't believe that the majority of the American public, or the political leadership in most places, feels that race and poverty is a sufficient threat to the society to make anything significant come out of it. You will have an escalation of tension and protest. You will have young black veterans from Viet Nam who have reached a very high point of bitterness and who, having suffered for what they felt were dubious reasons, will refuse to accept injustice. They are coming back with skills in warfare and with no feelings of inferiority.

Seale: First, you have no pat blueprint for revolution. Second, I see the power structure moving into a fascist state, George Orwell's 1984, where they say, "Big Brother is watching you." They will move to take away constitutional rights, not only from black people but, as we can see with the Chicago Seven, from white people too. And at the same time, I see a lot of black, white, red and brown people becoming politically educated and moving to oppose the fascist regime that's being built.

What are your recommendations for achieving black goals in the next ten years?

Bond: We should end the war first. We should not only redirect the money (which President Nixon says won't happen) but redirect the minds that are used to plot the war. Second, Congress has to make good on its promises of almost 30 years ago that every American will live in a decent home. Third, you must guarantee full employment. You have to provide income maintenance for those who cannot earn an income. You need make-work programs. We should break the control of the unions over the skilled trades. It's ridiculous that in a city like New York you have so much difficulty getting a plumber. Why couldn't the plumbers' union let some blacks in? Fourth, we must improve the quality of primary and secondary schools, particularly among minority people. In some schools, a kid goes to school twelve years and comes out on the fifth-grade level.

Young: We must modify attitudes. This must start at the elementary-school level. This is why I pushed so hard for integration and desegregation. It can't wait until people get into high school. It's like that song in South Pacific, "You've got to be taught before you are six, or seven, or eight."

Seale: When we speak of what is to be accomplished, we have to deal with an understanding that the political, economic and social injustices that exist have to be solved with some practical program. The Panther party's free-breakfast program for children and its attack on hunger are related to where we're going. There are 15 million people in this country who are hungry, and 50% of them are black, and when you move in this fashion, you start taking care of the children, because they will have to sustain the struggle.

What it's going to entail, though, is black people institutionalizing such programs in the community, where they have control over them. Even the poor white people have to oppose the system with these kinds of programs. It's a need for cooperative housing, cooperative marketing, more unity with the workers. The workers are going to have to start demanding a 30-hour work week with the same 40-hour pay. The poor oppressed are predominantly white unemployed. The courts have to be controlled more by the people, and the constitutional rights of the people are going to have to be secured.

Is a second civil war, or a race war between blacks and whites in America, a possibility or an inevitability?

Bond: I don't think it's inevitable. It is a possibility. This great mass of white middle America is getting more and more uptight. It is prone to answer violence with violence. But I don't see a civil war in the sense of two defined groups opposing each other violently. The black group is so small that it would render itself almost impotent. I just don't think we could carry it off.

Young: It's completely out of the question. To have war you've got to have some reasonable balance in the forces. Otherwise, you have a massacre. We're back with Nat Turner again. That's not a war, that's suicide. You're going to have sensation-seeking media who will play up those incidents and that rhetoric and make it seem as though they represent more people than they really do. This doesn't mean that the black people are not angry, bitter and enraged, and wouldn't like to kill some white people. But in terms of organized war, it's out of the question.

Seale: I don't think there's going to be a race war. Here in the streets, we can see that young middle-class people are opposing the Establishment in the manner that black people have.

What is your prescription for ending white racism in America?

Bond: It is part of the human condition, but it can be controlled. Government is the force to control it. If Government doesn't sanction it, its manifestations will be less severe. Some predicted that when lunch counters were integrated, blood would flow in the streets. But the Government said the counters would integrate. As resentful as white people were, and as much as white people dislike black people, blood didn't flow. There was no official Government sanction for it. Unfortunately, the Federal Government is sanctioning more racism today than five or ten years ago. You see the Moynihan memo, you see Nixon trying to kill the Voting Rights Act of '65 and trying to reverse the very slow process of desegregation. You see Congress trying to curb the work foundations have done among poor people. This is giving rise to overt acts of racism, like attacking school buses.

Young: We need to unleash all of the great researchers who have been spending all their time studying black people--and making money--onto the subject of white people to find out what in the world is wrong with that Man that makes him so obsessed with feeling superior. Why does he have to have somebody to feel superior to? I'd like to study why he wants to bring up his children in those bland, sterile, antiseptic, gilded ghettos, giving sameness to each other, producing stagnation and uncreative people in a world that's become a neighborhood. Why does he want to teach his child to disrespect people because of their occupation or their race? I think there's a sickness here, and it ought to be studied by those same people who've been making their living revealing the pathologies of black people.

Work must be done in the next few years to project the strengths of black people. We are seen always as a problem and a burden, never as an asset. I don't know of any other group of people who could have survived and grown, if they hadn't had some hidden assets like resilience and patience and soul, or whatever it is. We need to let white America know that we're talking not about cultural absorption but about cultural exchange. We don't know how to make napalm. They're smarter than we are on that. We don't know how to do price fixing. We don't know how to manipulate the stock market. But that apparently has not led to a very happy America, even at the very highest levels. When they begin to see that we bring something to the New Order, then this old condescending feeling of always giving and never taking will change.

Seale: What you have to do to end white racism is civilize white America. You have to educate the masses of white America to the trick bag that the power structure's putting them into.

What value is there in the notion of black nationalism or black separatism?

Bond: There are separatists who say it is possible for us to control a black community. We should control the school system, the police system, hopefully the economy, so that money both flows in and stays in the community. That kind of separatism is going to increase. The last decade has done more for racial consciousness among black people than anything else. It makes it easier for us to be a mental nation, a nation within a nation. We're a nation separate and apart in our problems and have to be dealt with separate and apart. And we have to think of ourselves as different from the whole.

Young: One of the positive changes in recent years has been a new acceptance of blacks being black. A new sense of pride, of dignity, and of personal worth is very necessary in order really to believe that you can keep in the mainstream. When pride, dignity and self-determination degenerate into calls for separatism, then it becomes self-defeating and plays right into the hands of the enemy, who would like nothing better than to have us separated.

Seale: You don't fight racism with racism. The best way to fight racism is with solidarity. When you talk of black separation it is not a point of whether we dig black separation. The fact of the matter is that now we are already separated. So we're not concerned with abstract, false notions of integration. Nor are we concerned with abstract, false notions of separation. We are concerned with the political, economic and social evils.

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