Pan-Africanism And Pride In Black Culture
On a cultural level, Malcolm, just like his Garveyite parents, fostered the need for self-respect and pride in Black culture through a variety of programs and courses. This is one of the themes that had been or primary importance for Stokely. Even during his time as a civil rights organizer, he worked hard to convince African Americans to take pride in their roots and their culture instead of emulating Whites. A few years later, he would try to convince Blacks in the African Diaspora that Africa was their mother country. And while he did not see the need that all Africans needed to return to the continent yet, he believed that at a certain point in time, all of them would feel the need to return home. Stokely’s education as a philosopher
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Emphasizing how long it took him personally to realize that Pan-Africanism was the solution to the “Black problem,” he narrated his own transition: first from civil rights to Black Power, and eventually to his current Pan-Africanist approach, and asked his supporters to have patience with those who have not arrived at this conclusion yet. As such, he appealed to Africans (living on the continent and in the Diaspora) to develop more understanding for each other and to avoid behavior that would intensify already existing tensions among them. At the end, he believed, all African American activism, whether it is civil rights or Black Power advocacy would naturally culminate in a Pan-Africanist outlook. In this respect, Stokely strengthened his appeal for Black unity to include all people of Africa and African descent. Despite his lifelong commitment to social justice and his embrace of race-conscious Marxism, Stokely either underestimated or minimized the economic fissures among and within the diverse African nations. The at times romantic notions that he fostered by ways of his Pan-Africanist vision largely neglect the prescient observations that Frantz Fanon made in the Wretched of the Earth, where he warned about the Black Bourgeoisie’s tendency to put class over racial
Emphasizing how long it took him personally to realize that Pan-Africanism was the solution to the “Black problem,” he narrated his own transition: first from civil rights to Black Power, and eventually to his current Pan-Africanist approach, and asked his supporters to have patience with those who have not arrived at this conclusion yet. As such, he appealed to Africans (living on the continent and in the Diaspora) to develop more understanding for each other and to avoid behavior that would intensify already existing tensions among them. At the end, he believed, all African American activism, whether it is civil rights or Black Power advocacy would naturally culminate in a Pan-Africanist outlook. In this respect, Stokely strengthened his appeal for Black unity to include all people of Africa and African descent. Despite his lifelong commitment to social justice and his embrace of race-conscious Marxism, Stokely either underestimated or minimized the economic fissures among and within the diverse African nations. The at times romantic notions that he fostered by ways of his Pan-Africanist vision largely neglect the prescient observations that Frantz Fanon made in the Wretched of the Earth, where he warned about the Black Bourgeoisie’s tendency to put class over racial