
            Civil Rights for all Americans has been a continuing problem since the start of American history and even today. White Americans have to some extent perpetuated this problem without offering any solutions. For centuries black people in America have been at the receiving end of white violence. This violence was extremely unwarranted and inhumane. Psychologically African Americans felt inferior to whites and this was not at their own behest; white Americans feared strong black people. This fear motivated them to make sure African Americans never garnered a sense of pride in themselves.  However, movements like the Civil Rights movement and Black power movement fostered strength and pride in the black community.  The black power movement however, developed out of a deeper need for black pride and prosperity. Simon Wendt’s “They Finally Found out That We Really Are Men” and Alvin F. Poussaint’s “How The White Problem Spawned BLACK POWER” in the historical context of Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Power” speech reveals that white guilt not only played a key role in motivating the black power movement, but also in perpetuating hypocritical double standards surrounding the movement’s practice of self-defense and nationalism.

The social, political, and economical standing of African Americans in the scope of black history has employed a sense of inferiority to white America. African Americans were kept wholly dependent upon white people for survival post reconstruction. White southerners perpetuated black inferiority through the use of black codes and Jim Crow. Integration would have meant quality and equality independence. Independence fosters pride: pride that was not acceptable or unheard of in a racist America. Stokely Carmichael asserted that, 

we cannot have white people working in the black community, and we mean it on a psychological ground. The fact is that all black people often question whether or not they are equal to whites, because every time they start to do something white people are around showing them how to do it…black people must be seen in positions of power, doing and articulating for themselves (Carmichael).

 The integrated moment in the south created many issues. Black civil righters were becoming disenchanted with the integration movement and annoyed with white volunteers due to these pressing issues. Blacks felt that white volunteers were either there to serve their own guilty conscience, to be so called rebels, or simply to be in charge of black people. According to Poussaint “most of them [black civil rights volunteers] felt that white civil rights volunteers caused too many problems. They also felt that most of the whites who came down were either just white racists of another variety or that they had psychological "hang-ups" centered around black people.”(Poussaint). In relation to each other both texts explore how the reasons white people were motivated to “help” African Americans were to feel superior in helping a less fortunate and the seemingly inferior working class Black American. The inferiority that black people felt when white people took it upon themselves to take leadership roles in these freedom groups motivated them to exclude white Americans, as their participation was unwanted or simply not needed. Black people, who were once integrationist, wanted to be in a movement were they felt powerful and in charge of themselves. Although this wasn’t the only problem in the Civil Rights Movement that brought about black power movement, it was most definitely a key promoter. Militant groups like the Black Panther Party had little to no white help/interference in their endeavors, they discouraged it. 

In his speech Carmichael states, “Anything all black is only bad when you use force to keep whites out. Now that’s what white people have done in this country, and they’re projecting those same fears and guilt on us (Carmichael 324).” Carmichael’s point here is that white people have been guilty of using force to keep black people out of white society, and that now they fear blacks will take this treatment and turn it back onto white people. This guilt and fear of black retaliation plays into the negative association of black power and Black Nationalism. White Americans recognized that white supremacy was indicative of black hatred and violence, so they expected Black Nationalism and power to encompass those same violent tendencies and hatred. Members within the movement were not driven by violence or hatred of white people. They were driven by a further need of black affirmation.  Wendt explains here that black men found pride in being on the defensive against racist attacks, “Working-class African American men found pride in physical protection of themselves and their people; they denounced the philosophy of non-violence and “considered it degrading to their manhood.”(Wendt). Whites feared black groups like the Black Panther party because they automatically associated black power with the white power of white supremacists groups like the KKK. Like Carmichael stated they were projecting their fears onto black people: the fear of experiencing or the possibility of experiencing the same violence that African Americans were subjected to by the hands of white illogical hate and supremacy. 

There is a hypocrisy surrounding the Black Power Movement and the principles that its promoters hold, in more specific terms: self-defense or the term its critics like to use - violence. White guilt caused by the abuse of African Americans caused the white public to fear a strong black community that defended itself and its people. In his, “Black Power,” speech Carmichael states that “White people beat up black people every day- Don’t nobody talk about nonviolence. But as soon as black people start to move, the double standard comes into being.” These lines reveal how violence or nonviolence is only brought up when black people mobilize. The “double standard” is dangerous and almost unfair. Wendt states that “The emerging Black Power move-ment re-emphasised blacks’ right to self-defence and publicly vowed to repel racist attacks with armed force. In popular memory, Black Power continues to be reduced to angry cries for violence that fostered race riots (Wendt).” This quote explains that the Black Power Movement recognized the black right to armed self-defense, but in the public view self-defense is reduced to cries for violence. There is an inability of the presumably white public to accept a movement that inspires something they fear: black retaliation. In turn the white public diminishes the real purpose of the movement and focuses on the element of violence it included. This action is hypocritical because blacks remained at the forefront of white violence for years. American history is riddled with violent actions that are in no way shape or form justifiable, but is the “land of the free or home of the brave” defined by such violence?

Between being told they were inferior and having to deal with violent treatment, African Americans had a serious plight in the years following slavery. Analysis of Simon Wendt’s “They Finally Found out That We Really Are Men” and Poussaint’s “How the White Problem Spawned Black Power” in the historical and cultural context of Carmichael’s speech revealed much about white hypocrisy, guilt and fear when it comes to the BP Movement. The guilt that white Americans held in the century following the freedom of slaves made its way into the nonviolent civil rights struggle; which in turn created a need for a less inclusive movement. Groups like the BPP in the late 60s struggled to garner a positive public persona, their militant rhetoric overshadowing their true intentions of black pride and independence. White America could not quite accept a movement that inspired black people to be strong and self-sufficient. Black masculinity was also a threat to white society; strong black men of the BP Movement were not passive in their fight for equality as their brothers had been in the nonviolent freedom struggle (The Civil Rights Movement). Expecting a race of people, after years of vicious harassment, to repeatedly turn the other cheek is ludicrous and one-sided. African Americans had a right to defend themselves and their people, although many, white and black, felt nonviolence was the only way to protect the rights of blacks. They also had the right to be proud of who they were without having to stroke white people’s egos and bear the burden of white guilt. 
