The so-called documentary "The Black Power Mixtape" is often hailed by the white left as the defining educational statement on the U.S. Black Power movement of the 1960s and 70s. White scholars have written volumes about the documentary and white left organizations often organize viewing of the film as if it is some sort of Bible on the movement. Meanwhile, no one has paid much attention to the fact very few if any African organizations, meaning no Black Nationalist organizations, Pan-African organizations, or even former Black Power movement activists/organizers, are lifting up this movie in the same fashion as the white left. Why?
Because the movie is terrible, that's why. Organized by some racist idiots from Europe, the film is a series of errors, miss-information, and caricatures. We won't even dwell on the obvious. The scene where the Scandinavian tour bus drives through Harlem while the racist narrator talks about the neighborhood being unsafe and "the Black man's" ghetto." Or, the ignorance of the man interviewing Angela Davis who herself becomes extremely annoyed at the man's complete lack of understanding of the African experience in the U.S. (we won't even get into the contradiction that Angela Davis herself was a member of the Communist Party USA at the time and besides being supportive of the Black Panther Party, wasn't even an active participant in the Black Power movement, but she was African, active, and famous, which appears to have been the only requirement for these filmmakers).
Instead we will challenge the ignorance of our own African celebrity narrators who took part in the movie. I realize the presence of Talib Qweli and Ahmir Thompson (Questlove) gives the movie credibility to lots of Europeans, many who believe their assignment as accomplices to African liberation is to listen to any African who has an opinion about white supremacy. And, from a musical standpoint, I'm a big fan of Qweli and Questlove's band "The Roots." That doesn't mean I'm going to depend on or rely on them to give me a proper analysis of my history and movements. That would be like them relying on me for lyrical and/or musical advice. That's why they are artists and we are activist/organizers. For example, Qweli kicks off this headache of a movie by narrating the first segment on 1967. The focus is on Kwame Ture who was then known as Stokely Carmichael. The movie doesn't provide viewers any history or context of what Ture actually did in the movement besides showing up for events, conferences, and speeches. And then, to astonishingly and officially confirm it, Qweli even ignorantly states that he was at a loss as to why the U.S. power structure was so concerned about Ture since "all he did was give speeches." This is why people need to read. Kwame Ture, as Stokely Carmichael and as Kwame Ture, did so much more than give speeches. Here was a man who engaged in on the ground organizing in some of the most dangerous terrain in this entire country. He organized for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi and Alabama during a time when doing so was tantamount to having a death wish. The systemic white violence against activists is well documented. Ture was arrested 26 times between 1961 and 1966 for this work and his participation and leadership in the historic 1966 "March against Fear" in Mississippi (the famous Black Power march where the slogan was launched and became a national movement) is historic. The Black Power movement launched that June of 66 in Mississippi is the movement where African people decided that we were going to stand strong and proud as we are, regardless of whether white America liked it, was comfortable with it, or accepted it or not. If you understand the importance of that movement, which Ture/Carmichael was a central leader, than you realize that without it, there would not have been a Brown pride movement, Women's Liberation Movement, an LGBTQI movement, an ableist movement. American Indian Movement co-founders, the recently departed Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt, stated in 1968, that their movement was inspired by the Black Power movement. Ture/Carmichael was a central leader of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama in 1965 which became better known as the original Black Panther Party that influenced the Oakland, California launched version that started a year later. Without all of this, there certainly would be no Black Lives Matter movement, no Afrocentric movement, none of it. Yet, none of this was even broached in the movie. Ture was just a guy who gave speeches. And, then to add insult to injury, Qweli, someone who himself has a cultural name, calls Ture Stokely Carmichael all throughout the segment when he must know that Ture changed his name back in 1977. If you don't know, for those of us who have seriously (not just here today gone tomorrow) taken on our African cultural names, its without question a sign of disrespect to continue to call us by our slave names that we have replaced. Something we expect from the white power structure, but definitely not something that should exist in a movie that is supposed to represent our movement and history.
Probably the biggest weakness of the film was its inability to tie the Black Power movement to our broader struggle for human rights and dignity as a people. Instead, the movie delves into a racist depiction of the problems that continue to plague African people like drug abuse etc. Its not to diminish these very real problems. The point is the movie depicts these issues as if the movement came, went, and these problems remain when the truth is the problems are clearly a reflection of the system's efforts to sabotage and destroy the movement. Heroin and cocaine are drugs that are systemically shipped into this country from other countries. Even the criminal Federal Bureau of Investigation confirms today that 50% of the heroin sold on U.S. streets today comes from Afghanistan. African people own no planes or boats. Most of us don't even know how to kayak so even a third grader could figure out that the drug epidemic is something that has been imposed on us for a higher objective. That objective is to crush the potential for an African led revolutionary movement in this country. If people are high they aren't going to organize. The Black Power movement represented the potential for that movement and the system moved, in many ways, to circumvent that. The movie missed all of this. Its as if the makers of the movie were only interested in viewing African people as a fetish.
Of course, the problem is any serious students of the Black Power movement must accept that you cannot gain an acceptable understanding of the movement by watching movies, even documentaries. You have to make a commitment to engage in serious study. And, there is so much out here that you can review. Any of the books of speeches by Malcolm X (there are several). There are a number of books about SNCC like "In Struggle" as well as books by and about Kwame Ture, Cleve Sellers, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga, Jamil Abdullah al Amin (H. Rap Brown), Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Sanford), Elijah Muhammad, and all of the frontline participants in the African liberation movement of the 1960s. If you are ignorant enough that you thought the Black Power Mixtape was an excellent display of the Black Power movement, you have no one to blame for your ignorance except your own political laziness. Get to work. When you start engaging in this serious study you will come to realize that the Black Power movement didn't exist in a vacuum. It happened, just like the civil rights movement and the African independence movement that inspired all of it, for a reason. The fact African people are the people who engage in spontaneous urban revolt, instead of other communities, happens for a reason. Those reasons are that capitalism is built and maintained on our oppression meaning the wealth of this society is produced based on the blood of Africa. No European produced documentary is going to provide you with that type of education and analysis. It will only come from the source. If you are serious about receiving that real education, you will start out 2018 with a different focus and seek it out.
Because the movie is terrible, that's why. Organized by some racist idiots from Europe, the film is a series of errors, miss-information, and caricatures. We won't even dwell on the obvious. The scene where the Scandinavian tour bus drives through Harlem while the racist narrator talks about the neighborhood being unsafe and "the Black man's" ghetto." Or, the ignorance of the man interviewing Angela Davis who herself becomes extremely annoyed at the man's complete lack of understanding of the African experience in the U.S. (we won't even get into the contradiction that Angela Davis herself was a member of the Communist Party USA at the time and besides being supportive of the Black Panther Party, wasn't even an active participant in the Black Power movement, but she was African, active, and famous, which appears to have been the only requirement for these filmmakers).
Instead we will challenge the ignorance of our own African celebrity narrators who took part in the movie. I realize the presence of Talib Qweli and Ahmir Thompson (Questlove) gives the movie credibility to lots of Europeans, many who believe their assignment as accomplices to African liberation is to listen to any African who has an opinion about white supremacy. And, from a musical standpoint, I'm a big fan of Qweli and Questlove's band "The Roots." That doesn't mean I'm going to depend on or rely on them to give me a proper analysis of my history and movements. That would be like them relying on me for lyrical and/or musical advice. That's why they are artists and we are activist/organizers. For example, Qweli kicks off this headache of a movie by narrating the first segment on 1967. The focus is on Kwame Ture who was then known as Stokely Carmichael. The movie doesn't provide viewers any history or context of what Ture actually did in the movement besides showing up for events, conferences, and speeches. And then, to astonishingly and officially confirm it, Qweli even ignorantly states that he was at a loss as to why the U.S. power structure was so concerned about Ture since "all he did was give speeches." This is why people need to read. Kwame Ture, as Stokely Carmichael and as Kwame Ture, did so much more than give speeches. Here was a man who engaged in on the ground organizing in some of the most dangerous terrain in this entire country. He organized for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in Mississippi and Alabama during a time when doing so was tantamount to having a death wish. The systemic white violence against activists is well documented. Ture was arrested 26 times between 1961 and 1966 for this work and his participation and leadership in the historic 1966 "March against Fear" in Mississippi (the famous Black Power march where the slogan was launched and became a national movement) is historic. The Black Power movement launched that June of 66 in Mississippi is the movement where African people decided that we were going to stand strong and proud as we are, regardless of whether white America liked it, was comfortable with it, or accepted it or not. If you understand the importance of that movement, which Ture/Carmichael was a central leader, than you realize that without it, there would not have been a Brown pride movement, Women's Liberation Movement, an LGBTQI movement, an ableist movement. American Indian Movement co-founders, the recently departed Dennis Banks, and Clyde Bellecourt, stated in 1968, that their movement was inspired by the Black Power movement. Ture/Carmichael was a central leader of the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama in 1965 which became better known as the original Black Panther Party that influenced the Oakland, California launched version that started a year later. Without all of this, there certainly would be no Black Lives Matter movement, no Afrocentric movement, none of it. Yet, none of this was even broached in the movie. Ture was just a guy who gave speeches. And, then to add insult to injury, Qweli, someone who himself has a cultural name, calls Ture Stokely Carmichael all throughout the segment when he must know that Ture changed his name back in 1977. If you don't know, for those of us who have seriously (not just here today gone tomorrow) taken on our African cultural names, its without question a sign of disrespect to continue to call us by our slave names that we have replaced. Something we expect from the white power structure, but definitely not something that should exist in a movie that is supposed to represent our movement and history.
Probably the biggest weakness of the film was its inability to tie the Black Power movement to our broader struggle for human rights and dignity as a people. Instead, the movie delves into a racist depiction of the problems that continue to plague African people like drug abuse etc. Its not to diminish these very real problems. The point is the movie depicts these issues as if the movement came, went, and these problems remain when the truth is the problems are clearly a reflection of the system's efforts to sabotage and destroy the movement. Heroin and cocaine are drugs that are systemically shipped into this country from other countries. Even the criminal Federal Bureau of Investigation confirms today that 50% of the heroin sold on U.S. streets today comes from Afghanistan. African people own no planes or boats. Most of us don't even know how to kayak so even a third grader could figure out that the drug epidemic is something that has been imposed on us for a higher objective. That objective is to crush the potential for an African led revolutionary movement in this country. If people are high they aren't going to organize. The Black Power movement represented the potential for that movement and the system moved, in many ways, to circumvent that. The movie missed all of this. Its as if the makers of the movie were only interested in viewing African people as a fetish.
Of course, the problem is any serious students of the Black Power movement must accept that you cannot gain an acceptable understanding of the movement by watching movies, even documentaries. You have to make a commitment to engage in serious study. And, there is so much out here that you can review. Any of the books of speeches by Malcolm X (there are several). There are a number of books about SNCC like "In Struggle" as well as books by and about Kwame Ture, Cleve Sellers, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Elaine Brown, Assata Shakur, Geronimo Ji Jaga, Jamil Abdullah al Amin (H. Rap Brown), Muhammad Ahmad (Maxwell Sanford), Elijah Muhammad, and all of the frontline participants in the African liberation movement of the 1960s. If you are ignorant enough that you thought the Black Power Mixtape was an excellent display of the Black Power movement, you have no one to blame for your ignorance except your own political laziness. Get to work. When you start engaging in this serious study you will come to realize that the Black Power movement didn't exist in a vacuum. It happened, just like the civil rights movement and the African independence movement that inspired all of it, for a reason. The fact African people are the people who engage in spontaneous urban revolt, instead of other communities, happens for a reason. Those reasons are that capitalism is built and maintained on our oppression meaning the wealth of this society is produced based on the blood of Africa. No European produced documentary is going to provide you with that type of education and analysis. It will only come from the source. If you are serious about receiving that real education, you will start out 2018 with a different focus and seek it out.
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