Also one must remember that these are African-American perspectives, and the USA has a comparatively radical take on race than other places in the world. When I visit the US, or even watch American news, I am shocked to see how much of a racial divide is present in the US. If you see a really expensive car in the states, you can bet the driver is white. White Americans have little shame conversing about their fears of Blacks "Whom they delicately reffer to as African-Americans while making their racist paranoia's apparent". This is not to say that racism is not a problem in Canada, it is a very large problem which we must deal with as soon as possible, but it is so much more blatant and the disparity of races is so much greater in the US.
I am not trying to say my country is perfect, or even good, we have huge problems about the way we treat the indigenous people here, but as bad as it is here, I am still shocked by its blatantness just a few hundred km to the south. I am not trying to negate the problems of Canada by saying the Americans are worse, I recognize a huge amount of Canadian problems we must deal with, but the Black Panthers are a quintessentially American Party, dealing with the racist issues of the US, which are different, and comparatively more severe than much of the rest of the world. For instance, watching CNN one day I heard people broadcasting on international television that "The blacks are the racists, you wont find WET on TV, and all victims of modern racism are white". First of all, Holy Shit, this is on National TV, you dont see this on Canadian news ever, not to say Canadian news is perfect, or, again, even good. Secondly, white people had better be thankful that there is no white equivelant to BET, because a WET would be owned by blacks and continually perpetuating negative stereotypes of whites, pretty well the exact reverse of the white owned BET.
Also, definitions of white/black colour-coded race do not exist everywhere (though they certainly do in Canada, the US, and much of the west). Take for instance Malcolm X's travel to Makkah. When Youtube is working (its being a sketchbag right now) there is a video of him describing how race was not viewed as relevant in Makkah, and how people who in the US would be defined, and define themselves as White or Black, simply saw themselves as humans. Race is not universal, many people in Brazil who are identified as White there would be viewed as Black in the US. Part of the problem of American racism is that it is very puritan in its definitions. But I suppose thats what happened when people made race up 5 centuries ago.
Such engrained myths are hard to rid ourselves [all humanity] of, but the effort must be made. Simply ignoring race wont make it go away unless you can get everyone to do it for at least one generation. That being said, I wonder if thats possible......But until the unlikely and utopian event that that happens, we need to work while recognizing race in order to close the gaps of disparity.
<span style=\'color:red\'>Liberty without Socialism is privilege, injustice; Socialism without Liberty is Slavery and Brutality.
-Mikhail Bakunin</span>
<span style=\'color:gray\'>The assumption that what currently exists must necessarily exist is the acid that corrodes all visionary thinking.
-Murray Bookchin</span>
<span style=\'color:red\'>When we ask for the abolition of the State and its organs we are always told that we dream of a society composed of men better than they are in reality. But no; a thousand times, no. All we ask is that men should not be made worse than they are, by such institutions!
-Peter Kropotkin</span>
