The values of this society support a racist system; we find it incongruous to ask black people to adopt and support most of those values. We also rej… - Stokely Carmichael

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The values of this society support a racist system; we find it incongruous to ask black people to adopt and support most of those values. We also reject the assumption that the basic institutions of this society must be preserved. The goal of black people must not be to assimilate into middle-class America, for that class—as a whole—is without a viable conscience as regards humanity. The values of the middle class permit the perpetuation of the ravages of the black community. The values of that class are based on material aggrandizement, not the expansion of humanity. The values of that class ultimately support cloistered little closed societies tucked away neatly in tree-lined suburbia. The values of that class do not lead to the creation of an open society. That class mouths its preference for a free, competitive society, while at the same time forcefully and even viciously denying to black people as a group the opportunity to compete.

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About Stokely Carmichael

Stokely Carmichael (June 29, 1941 – November 15, 1998), also known as Kwame Ture, was a prominent American figure in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States and the global Pan-African movement. He founded the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), later serving as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party (BPP), and finally as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Kwame Ture Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael
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Additional quotes by Stokely Carmichael

Today, the American educational system continues to reinforce the entrenched values of the society through the use of words. Few people in this country question that this is “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” They have had these words drummed into them from childhood. Few people question that this is the “Great Society” or that this country is fighting “Communist aggression” around the world. We mouth these things over and over, and they become truisms not to be questioned. In a similar way, black people have been saddled with epithets.

If political institutions do not meet the needs of the people, if the people finally believe that those institutions do not express their own values, then those institutions must be discarded. It is wasteful and inefficient, not to mention unjust, to continue imposing old forms and ways of doing things on a people who no longer view those forms and ways as functional.

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