




America in the 1960’s was separated into a superior “white country” and an inferior “black country.” “The Challenges of Race: From Entrenched White Power to Rising Black Power”, written by Locksley Edmondson and “Race Problems in America” by Ruth Benedict influence Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Power” speech that he gave at the University of California at Berkley. All three pieces of literature stress the problems of having two societies in one country that are full of hatred toward each other. 

Locksley’s article describes the dangers that the separation of two races in one country can lead to. He cites that “the 1968 Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders concluded that the United States is ‘a year closer to being two societies, black and white, increasingly separate and scarcely less unequal’” (693). He also goes on to explain how the African American race is more than capable of helping run the country because, “On the African Continent, the convergence of race and politics has been most pronounced” (694). He continues to praise how successful the African American race has been in their efforts to spread internationalization of racial politics and issues. He gives political evidence of racial acceptance in politics in southern African countries, Nigeria, and East Africa. Also, Edmondson explains how “Utilizing black-white relations as the primary analytical focus…allows for a wider comprehension of the race factor in international politics” (695). Clearly, the main focus of Edmondson’s article is to prove his point that African Americans will, indeed, help make the United States a stronger country politically and in its social issues. 

Edmondson’s article can relate to the speech given by Stokely Carmichael at UC Berkley because the main point of Carmichael’s speech was to prove to the up and coming white youth of America that the African Americans by asking them what everyone can do to stop this unjust war between the two races. Carmichael uses well known social activist, Frederick Douglass, to explain how “the youth should fight to be leaders today” (318). Like Edmondson, Carmichael shows off his education of American and racial politics to show how African Americans do indeed have the capability to share a spot in future political movements in the country. These two pieces of literature can go hand in hand with each other in the fact that, if Edmondson’s political analysis of African countries was combined with Carmichael’s questioning of the justification of American society as a whole, the persuasiveness would be ten times stronger than both of them already are. Both pieces of literature are built on the idea of persuasiveness and showcasing education in fields that the white’s in the 1960’s did not think that the blacks were capable of even having. One of the most powerful pieces of Carmichael’s speech, I believe, is how he describes the country’s hypocrisy of nonviolence. He says that the only time that nonviolence is even mentioned is when blacks defend themselves against the whites, and then the whites counter with violence that the blacks are afraid of. 


Ruth Benedict’s article, titled, “Race Problems in America”, focuses more on the science behind racial issues in mid-18th century America. She explains how the problem with racial issues is based on the argument of popular opinion of race and the science experiments of race. She quotes that, “To the scientist, race is a classification based on hereditary traits combined in any individual according to the laws of genetics” (73).  To counter that with the opinions of those who believed in the popular opinion at the time, “Race in popular phraseology is a series of definite categories where one can file the Englishman and the Irish, the Italian and the Spaniard in separate pigeonholes” (73). She cites that science experiments on race that focus on physical features “possibly, have some relation to survival” (73). With that said, one’s race does not affect human intelligence whatsoever, which is something that white Americans were caught up on in the 1960’s. She then criticizes the American people by explaining how Americans were upset at the fact that Germany was being run by a racist power, but “it appeals to many American citizens who want a slogan to justify persecution of others and glorification of themselves” (74). She questions why people are so focused on Germany when the racism is just as harsh at home in the United States. She then pitches ways to fix this problem by saying that Americans need to choose the best ways to deal with racial conflict rather than choosing the ways that are self defeating. The main purpose of Benedict’s article is to show how illogical people think when they claim that one race is superior than another race. The sad thing is that this is still a problem that America has to this day.

Even though Benedict’s article was written in the 1940’s it shows the racial tension in America between whites and blacks even before the 1960’s. This article proves through science that being a different color does not mean that you can not run a country. In fact, race scientifically has nothing to do with power at all. This would have helped Carmichael’s case he made during his speech because it would have been more support saying that blacks were fit to help run the United States of America. 

The African Americans unfortunately needed people like these to help persuade the whites to accept the blacks as equal human beings. These three powerful pieces of African American literature were a huge step towards creating the more equal country that we have today.

