[Nettime-bold] .memories Angela Davis Interview

["Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>]

INTERVIEWER: Your mentor, Herbert Marcuse 
once back in '58, as I recall, said that 
one of the things that would happen as 
blacks made gains in the civil rights 
movement was that there would be the 
creation of a black bourgeoisie and 
that's certainly been one of the things 
that's happened as we look back from the 
vantage point of 1997. How do you see the 
role of the black bourgeoisie in the 
continuing struggle? 

DAVIS: Actually we've had a black 
bourgeoisie or the makings of a black bourgeoisie for many more decades.... 
if we look at one of our great leaders, 
W.E.B. Du Bois, he was associated with 
a very minuscule black bourgeoisie in 
the 19th century so this is not something 
that is substantively new although the 
numbers of black people who now count themselves among the black bourgeoisie 
certainly does make an enormous difference.
 
In a sense the quest for the emancipation of 
black people in the US has always been a quest 
for economic liberation which means to a 
certain extent that the rise of black middle 
class would be inevitable. What I think is 
different today is the lack of political 
connection between the black middle class 
and the increasing numbers of black people 
who are more impoverished than ever before. 

INTERVIEWER: Isn't that inevitable though? 
Hasn't every immigrant group, as it becomes
 part of the American mainstream, left behind
 its roots in a certain way? 

DAVIS: That's true but I think the 
contemporary problem that we are facing 
increasing numbers of black people and other 
people of color being thrown into a status 
that involves work in alternative economies 
and increasing numbers of people who are 
incarcerated. This is new. This is not the 
typical path toward freedom that immigrants 
have traditionally discovered in the US. 

And I guess what I would say is that we can't think narrowly about movements for black 
liberation and we can't necessarily see this 
class division as simply a product or a 
certain strategy that black movements have 
developed for liberation. But rather we have 
to look at the structural changes that have 
also accompanied the gains of the civil rights
 movement. We have to look at for example the 
increasing globalization of capital, the whole
 system of transitional capitalism now which 
has had an impact on black populations -- that
 has for example eradicated large numbers of
 jobs that black people traditionally have 
been able to count upon and created 
communities where the tax base is lost now as 
a result of corporations moving to the third 
world in order to discover cheap labor. I 
would suggest is that in the latter 1990s it 
is extremely important to look at the 
predicament of black people within the context
 of the globalization of capital. 

INTERVIEWER: One of the things that struck me
 as I've gone back and revisited this history
 --is that Martin Luther King starts this 
movement for economic justice just before he's 
assassinated. The Black Panther party is just
 getting off the ground here in California and
 in a way there seems like there was a march
 towards merging these issues of class and 
race in the late 60s that somehow got 
derailed. 

DAVIS: Yes, I think it's really important to 
acknowledge that Dr. King, precisely at the 
moment of his assassination, was re-
conceptualizing the civil rights movement and 
moving toward a sort of coalitional 
relationship with the trade union movement. 
It's I think quite significant that he was in 
Memphis to participate in a demonstration by 
sanitation workers who had gone out on strike. 
Now, if we look at the way in which the labor movement itself has evolved over the last 
couple of decades, we see increasing numbers 
of black people who are in the leadership of 
the labor movement and this is true today. 

INTERVIEWER: We also see an increasingly 
weaker labor movement. 

DAVIS: Well, we see an increasingly weaker 
labor movement as a result of the overall 
assault on the labor movement and as a result 
of the globalization of capital. So yeah, 
you're absolutely right, but I'm thinking 
about some developments say in the 80s when 
the anti-apartheid movement began to claim 
more support and strength within the US. Black 
trade unionists played a really important role 
in developing this US anti-apartheid movement. 
For example, right here in the Bay Area one of 
the first major activist moments was the 
refusal on the part of the longshoremen's 
union to unload ships that were coming in from 
South Africa and the ILWU then took the 
leadership here in the Bay Area, particularly 
as a result of the black caucus within the 
ILWU, they took the leadership in creating an 
anti-apartheid movement that spread to all of 
the campuses, UC Berkeley, Stanford. 

INTERVIEWER: At least from my vantage point, 
back then it seemed we were attacking 
structures and institutions and after a 
certain point it began to feel like it wasn't 
possible. Our leaders were assassinated, one 
of the things I was reading today was -- 28 
Panthers were killed by the police but 300 
Black Panthers were killed by other Panthers 
just within -- internecine warfare. It just 
began to seem like we were in an impossible 
task given what we were facing. How do we 
reawaken that sense that one person can really
 make that difference again now? And kids 
these days are kind of going back to Tupac and
 Snoop Doggy Dogg as examples of people that
 stand for something. 

DAVIS: It's true that it's within the realm of 
cultural politics that young people tend to 
work through political issues, which I think 
is good, although it's not going to solve the 
problems. I guess I would say first of all 
that we tend to go back to the 60s and we tend 
to see these struggles and these goals in a 
relatively static way. The fact is important 
gains were made and those gains are still 
visible today. For example, the number of 
African-American studies programs that are on 
college campuses today. Those institutional 
changes are inconceivable outside of that 
development within -- related to the Black 
Panther party and other organizations. Young 
people began to take those struggles onto the 
campuses 

INTERVIEWER: The last line
 in the essay Skip Gates has in The Future of 
the Race is-- "only sometimes do I feel guilty
 that I was one of the lucky ones. Only 
sometimes do I ask myself why." I wonder 
whether you ever feel guilty for having been 
one of those who have survived? 

DAVIS: Well, I think about it. But I don't 
know whether I feel guilty. I think that has 
to do with my awareness that in a sense we all 
have a certain measure of responsibility to 
those who have made it possible for us to take
 advantage of the opportunities. The door is
 opened only so far. If some of us can squeeze
 through the crack of that door, then we owe 
it to those who have made those demands that 
the door be opened to use the knowledge or the 
skills that we acquire not only for ourselves 
but in the service of the community as well. 
This is something that I guess I decided a 
long time ago. 

INTERVIEWER: But still there were those who 
were arrested around the same time you are 
were still in prison? You got out -- you got 
off in some ways because you had become such a 
cause celebre that there were others who didn't have. 

DAVIS: I mean that's true but I am actually 
addressing your question about guilt, and I'm 
trying to suggest that maybe there are other 
ways to deal with it than with guilt. So 
rather than feeling guilty is what I have done
 is to continue the work. As soon as I got out
 of jail, as soon as my trial was over, first
 of all, during the time I was in jail, there 
was an organization called the National United 
Committee to Free Angela Davis, and I insisted 
that it be called National United Committee to 
Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners. 

As soon as my trial was over, we tried to use 
the energy that had developed around my case 
to create another organization, which we 
called the National Alliance against Racist 
and Political Repression. And, what? in June 
it will have been 25 years since my trial was 
over. I'm still working for the freedom of 
political prisoners, Mumia Abu Jamal, the 
Puerto Rican political prisoners, such as 
Dinci Pargan, for example, Leonard Pelletier.
 I'm involved in the work around prison rights 
in general. I think the importance of doing 
activist work is precisely because it allows 
you to give back and to consider yourself not 
as a single individual who may have achieved 
whatever but to be a part of an ongoing 
historical movement. Then I don't think it's 
necessary to feel guilty. Because I know that 
I'm still doing the work that is going to help 
more sisters and brothers to challenge the 
whole criminal justice system, and I'm trying 
to use whatever knowledge I was able to 
acquire to continue to do the work in our 
communities that will move us forward.


INTERVIEWER: One of the problems, as we came 
into the 70s is it seemed as though we were 
fighting institutions and structures that 
were so big that there just seemed to be 
nothing that one person could do about them...
 How do we recapture that sense of a kind of 
power of being bold enough to take on those 
structures again? 

DAVIS: I don't know whether the movement 
crashed as a result of the overwhelming 
character of the institutions we set out to 
change. I think repression had a lot to do 
with the dismantling of the movement and also 

the winning of certain victories had something
 to do with the inability of the movement to 
take those victories as the launching point 
for new goals and developing new strategies. 

But I do think it's extremely important to 
acknowledge the gains that were made by the 
civil rights movement, the black power 
movement. I don't think we do that enough.. 

Institutional transformations happened 
directly as a result of the movements that 
people, unnamed people, organized and gave 
their lives to. 

INTERVIEWER: Such as? 

DAVIS: I'm thinking about the desegregation of 
the south, for example, and the fact that some
 black women decided to boycott the bus system
 and this was actually done and eventually 
those laws were transformed or changed. 

INTERVIEWER: The other thing that happened of 
course is that the struggle isn't so much 
taking place on college campuses any more, 
it's taking place in corporate board rooms or 
within the corporate structure and those of us 
who are there are both -- it's a weird thing 
happening. On one hand we're more reticent 
about taking on the racist things that we see
 happening within that environment, but the 
other thing that's happening is we're becoming
 more Afrocentric at the same time. It's 
almost like, we kind of feel like if we show 
up wearing our kente cloth that that's it, 
we've done our struggle. What is that about? 
Where does that come from? 

DAVIS: I think it arises out of a tendency 
often to conflate cultural blackness with anti-
racism. I think this is another case where 
there are lessons to be learned during the 
period of the 60s when organizations like the 
Black Panther Party were coming into being, 
there were other cultural nationalist 
organizations such as US Organization, such as 
the organization that Amiri Baraka developed 
and of course Amiri OK, there was the black 

arts movement which was extremely important,
 but there was also Baraka's political 
organization in Newark that took a cultural 
nationalist position that assumed that if we 
were able to connect with the culture of our 
African ancestors that somehow or another 
these vast problems surrounding us, racism in 
education, in the school, racism in the 

economy, in health care, etc would disappear.
 They were very interesting conflicts and 
debates between groups like the Black Panther 
party and the cultural nationalist groups in 
the 60s. 

INTERVIEWER: What were those debates? What was
 the nature of that debate between the Black 
Panther and say a group like US? 

DAVIS: The debate often focused on what young 
black people wanting to associate themselves 
with a movement for liberation should do, 
whether they should become active in campaigns 
against police violence, for example, or 
whether they should focus their energy on 
wearing African clothes and changing their 
name and developing rituals. One of the names 
members of the Black Panther Party used to 
call those who focused on Africa and African 
rituals was sort of pork chop nationalists. 
There were some of us who argued that yes, we 
need to develop a cultural consciousness of 
our connection with Africa particularly since 
racist structures had relied upon the sort of 
cultural genocide going back to the period of 
slavery so that many of us were arguing that 
we could affirm our connection with our 
African ancestors in political ways as well, 
following for example Dr. Du Bois' vision of 
pan-Africanism which was an anti-imperialist 
notion of pan-Africanism rather than the pan-
Africanism that projected a very idealized, 
romantic image of Africa, a fictional notion 
of Africa and assumed that all we needed to do 
was to become African, so to speak, rather 
than become involved in organized anti-
imperialist struggles. So I think that the 
debate around pan-Africanism at the beginning,
 in the aftermath of world war I, for example, 
that Dr. Du Bois participated in, took on a 
different character but recapitulated some of 
the very same kinds of concepts and issues in 
the 1960s. 

INTERVIEWER: So what does it say to you that 
here we are in 1997 and the pan-
Africanist/cultural nationalist agenda is the
 one that the commercial side, that Wall 
Street has fastened onto--that side seems to 
have been triumphant and that the anti-
imperialist movement is, not in retreat, but 
certainly not being heard from as much. 

DAVIS: It doesn't surprise me that aspect of 
the black nationalist movement, the cultural 
side, has triumphed because that is the aspect 
of the movement that was most commodifiable 
and when we look at the commodification of 
blackness we're looking at a phenomenon that's 
very profitable and it's connection with the 
rise of a black middle class I think is very 
obvious. As far as the tradition of struggle 
and tradition of anti-imperialist, anti-
capitalist struggle I think that is one that 
has to be fought for and recrafted 
continuously. It's not going to happen on its 
own, it's not going to be taken up by the 
capitalist corporations and presented as 
something that is both profitable and 
something that is pleasurable to masses of 
people. 

INTERVIEWER: In a way I find it interesting 
that Kwanzaa -- you know Karenga's ideas which 
apparently seem to have been financed by the 
FBI, at least in part, are the ones that now 
most black folks would say they would hold to 
and not the ideals of the Panther Party which 
were about survival, at least in some part an 
economic survival. 


DAVIS: To a certain extent I think both 
traditions have survived. The cultural 
nationalist tradition has been commodified 
and therefore it has been worked into the whole institution of capitalism in a way 
that the traditions of struggling against 
police violence have not, but those 
traditions are 
still very much alive. As a matter of fact 
I think that the response to the OJ Simpson 
trial was based on a kind of sensibility 
that emerged out of the many campaigns to 
defend black communities against police 
violence. It 
so happened that a figure like OJ Simpson 
was the one who benefited from those 
sensibilities, but I think it's important to 
affirm the fact that sensibility continues to 
exist and a kind of desire for black movements 
continues to exist even, I think, among middle 
class black people. 


This accounts, I think, for the success of 
the Million Man March because black people tend to think of themselves as a people in 
struggle. This has been our history within 
this country and there's a kind of nostalgia 
for those moments where the struggle becomes dramatic and visible and powerful, although the Million Man March wasn't such a moment, 
I would argue, because there were no 
political demands that addressed the 
major problems that black communities are confronting yet there were the images ofstruggle, there were the images o
masses of people that I think affected and
brought pleasure to and moved so many black 
people. Now perhaps we can use that. Perhaps 
we can rely on that as we try to build 

movements that will address the impoverishment
 
of masses of black people, the 

prison/industrial complex. I have to maintain some hope that that's possible. But at the same time I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March. 
INTERVIEWER: You were critical of the Million Man March before? What was the substance of your criticism? 
DAVIS: We developed this criticism on a number of accounts. First of all, the failure to integrate gender into the vision of what the black community needed, the exclusion of women from the march itself although finally I think someone said it's OK for black women to come, they don't have to stay at home with the babies as they were urged to before. But my criticism was also based on the conservative politics of the Million Man March, the conservative politics, the tendency to rely on voluntarism, the way in which the politics of the march coexisted quite harmoniously with the politics of a Newt Gingrich, for example the focus on family values that again linked the march to some of the most conservative developments in US society today, the assault on women's reproductive rights, etc. If this march of a million black men had raised issues such as the assault on the welfare system, the assault on women's reproductive rights, if there had been a sense of how to address this vast!
 issue of violence against women, rather than assuming that a patriarchal family structure in which black men would -- 
INTERVIEWER: Atone. 
DAVIS: Atone but also assume their role as the patriarchs in the family, cause that's what the atonement was all about. The black men were not really being the fathers that they needed to be, not really taking on the burden of the family in the way they needed to do it. I found that extremely problematic because I think it's important for us to recognize that although historically black communities have been very progressive with respect to issues of race and with respect to struggles for racial equality, that does not necessarily translate into progressive positions on gender issues, progressive positions on issues of sexuality and in the latter 1990s we have to recognize the intersectionality, the interconnectedness of all of these institutions and attitudes. 
INTERVIEWER: Now that the Million Man March is over, do you still feel it was not a correct thing to have done? 
DAVIS: Those of us who criticized the Million Man March -- were not arguing that it shouldn't happen. We were arguing that debates around the issues taken up by the march needed to be allowed particularly within black communities. I guess what I would criticize today is the tendency to conflate that dramatic moment with a movement. 
The nostalgia within black communities for this mass movement which involves vast numbers of black people coming together is something that can often lead us in unproductive directions. Because in the past the demonstrations that we think about -- the 1963 march on Washington, for example, that march wasn't this moment that was organized against the backdrop of nothing else. It was a demonstrating of the organizing that had been going on for years and years and to assume that one can call a march on Washington and have that be a movement in the 1990s is I think a tremendous mistake. I would say perhaps the importance of the Million Man March was that it stimulated a great deal of discussion. Perhaps it brought to people's attention the fact that we need to begin to regenerate an approach towards grassroots organizing that will help us in the direction of a mass movement. 
There was a tendency of the middle class men who I think participated in that march to passionately identify with the brother on the street without taking up the kinds of political issues that are required to move black people who are in poverty in a progressive direction. 
INTERVIEWER: Of course the brothers on the street are identifying with the gangster rappers or at least the younger brothers on the street are, which is a whole other level of symbolic identity. 
DAVIS: And not only the brothers on the street but the middle class brothers are also identifying with the gangster rappers because of the extent to which this music circulates. It becomes possible for the -- not only the young middle class men, but it becomes possible for young middle class white men and young men of other racial communities to identify with the misogyny of gangster rap. 
INTERVIEWER: Well, it's not just misogyny. Now it's kind of moved just a straight crass materialism. The latest ones are just -- they just name off name brands. That's the progression of it. How have we reached a point where in 1997 that the ethic of being black means that you don't go to school to learn. That learning is equated with whiteness and that somehow that is bad? 
DAVIS: Well, whether it's the approach that all young black kids are encouraged to take or decide to take. Because you do have this rising middle class and you do have the young brothers and sisters who are moving toward the corporate arena and who are encouraged to do this arena from the time that they are very young. I think this is one of those moments where we also have to talk about the deterioration of the institutions. 
I can't really blame a lot of young sisters and brothers who believe that education has anything to offer them. Because as a matter of fact, it has nothing to offer them. Suppose they do get a high school diploma that is meaningful. What kind of job is awaiting them. The jobs that used to be available to working class people are not there as a result of the de-industrialization of this economy. 
Therefore, often young black people are looking towards the alternative economies. They are looking towards the drug economy.... the economies that are going to -- that apparently will produce some kind of material gain for them. You can't criticize people for wanting to have a decent life or wanting to live decently. While I think that it is true that there is a great deal to be done with respect to the ideas that circulate among young people within arenas such as hip hop. At the same time, we can't forget about the deterioration of the institutions and the structural influence on young people. 
INTERVIEWER: Bring us back to globalization of capital. How do you mobilize around an issue like globalization of capital? 
DAVIS: Well, you mobilize around globalization of capital in local ways. Obviously there are some organizations that go out on the street and say we want an end to the capitalist system. But obviously that is not going to happen as a result of just assuming that stance. I think in black communities today we need to encourage a lot more cross racial organizing. For example, we look at the assault on immigrants. Both legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants. Where does the black community stand with respect to that issue? 
I think it is important to recognize that there is a connection between the predicament of poor black people and the predicament of immigrants who come to this country in search of a better life. The de industrialization of the US. economy based on the migration of corporations into third world areas where labor is very cheap and thus more profitable for these companies creates on the one hand conditions in those countries that encourage people to emigrate to the US. in search of a better life. On the other hand, it creates conditions here that send more black people into the alternative economies, the drug economies, women into economies in sexual services, and sends them into the prison industrial complex. 
So we have to figure out how to formulate issues that are going to bring those of us together who are affected in one way or another by the globalization of capital...When we consider how much a young black person wants to, or is willing to pay for a pair of Nike's, right? -- and then think about the conditions under which tose shoes are made in Indonesia or wherever, uh, at the same time that that young sister or brother will be treated on the labor market here as indispensible and perhaps as someone to be cast away into the prison system. So there are reasons for coming together if we can figure out some specific kinds of strategies and tactics that will allow it. I think this is the real challenge for this era, which means we have to get away from a narrow conception of blackness. We can't talk about the black community. It's no longer a homogeneous community; it was never a homogeneous community. At one point, it did make sense to talk about the black community because we !
were struggling against the profound impact of racism on people's lives in various ways. We still have to struggle against the impact of racism, but it doesn't happen in the same way. I think it is much more complicated today than it ever was. 
INTERVIEWER: Does the fact that black folks are now a heterogeneous community absolve us from the obligation to keep reaching back -- everybody to reach back, each one -- reach one? 
DAVIS: I think we need to insist on a certain responsibility, which people have -- particularly those who have made it into the ranks of the middle class because as Dr. King said many years ago in a sense they have climbed out of the masses on the shoulders of their sisters and brothers and therefore, they do have some responsibility. 
But whether people would be willing to assume that responsibility or not is something that is up to them. We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity -- black political unity is possible. 

INTERVIEWER: What's the coalition? 

DAVIS: Political coalition. Politically based 
coalitions. I think we have to really focus on
 the issues much more than we may have in the 
past. I think we have to, as I said before, 
seek to create coalitional strategies that go 
beyond racial lines. We need to bring black 
communities, Chicano communities, Puerto Rican 
communities, Asian American communities 
together.



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