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FREEDOMWAYS 
FIRST QUARTER 1972

"Well, we freed 'em, now they're talking about equality, political power, economic power and all the other things. Now we only wrote into the Constitution that they're three-fifths of a human being, so we ain't talkin' about all that freedom. So we got to put these 'niggers' down. They takin' up our time. So until we deal with them we can' deal with you. That's our problem—the 'niggers.' They pose a problem to everything we tryin' to do. I would like to help you."

The sharecropper straightened himself up and he said, "Thank you. boss. I'm sure glad you told me what the problem is." He ten ran down the stairs, ran down the road, and with his two or three last dollars bought him a shot gun, strapped it on his back. Probably to this day he's eking out an existence on four acres of barren land—looking for "niggers."

Now what do I mean by that story? At one point the sharecropper did an objective assessment of this own reality, his own misery and the misery of his family. He then put down his plow and identified the power structure and went to confront it. When he knocked on the door he was asking the most relevent questions in America: What about the lack of equity in the distribbution of power and wealth? And the landowner realized that if he had given an honest answer to that question he was going to have to give up some land, some power, or some money—or for the brothers and sisters in the audiences, some "head." And he didn't want to do that. So he created a scapegoat. He said "Look! 'Niggers!' "—diverted the sharecropper's atttention from the objective assessment of his reality to the scapegoat, the "niggers."

Now let's take my analogy into 1972; I think it still holds. The sharecropper still exists but we euphemistically refer to the sharecropper as the "white silent majority." The landowner still exists but we, in rather sophisitcated terms, refer to him as the military-industrial complex. And as for that third group of characters, right!—we're still "niggers!" But I've got good news for all the black people from the bottom floor to the top row: We no longer have a monopoloy on "niggerism" in America.

You no longer have to be black to be a "nigger." You can be Chicano—you're a "nigger," Puerto Rican, Asian-American, native American—you're a "nigger;" a woman in a white, male-chauvinist, sexist society that sees women as bed-makers, broom-pushers, bottle-makers and bed partners—they're "niggers" in this society! You've got long hair and a beard, sir, you're a "nigger" in this society. You believe that the war in Indochina is illegal, immoral and insane;

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Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-16 11:27:33