![]() ![]() Even Huey’s eventual arrests and trials, his long self-exile from politics, and his death in a crack deal make for a sensational story that often conflates the history of The Black Panther Party’s intent with its sensational, sordid side effects. It’s an eventual history of betrayal and power struggles and infiltration and too much money and too little control. The history of The Black Panther Party is inarguably a convoluted history with plenty of sensational ugliness. To Huey Newton, revolution came by ensuring that all people were treated like humans. Newton, was gaining access to the most basic functions of a society: clothes, food, education, family, shelter, justice. Defense, to Seale and Newton, was a knowledge and understanding of the law, which could be used to protect people who systemically were not afforded that protection. After all, co-founder Bobby Seale had years of military training and was responsible for training members of The Black Panther Party in the handling and safety of legal firearms. His driving force was the police attacks in Oakland on peaceful demonstrations, which he recognized as a violation of First Amendment rights of peaceable assembly. And he was named Minister of Defense because Newton had become obsessed with Constitutional rights and had intended to go to law school. ![]() But Newton was the Minister of Defense,not the Minister of Violence or the Minister of War or the Minister of Aggression. Newton was named Minister of Defense, a leadership role quickly characterized by the media as an aggressive role. Here he met Bobby Seale, and the two – disgusted by the lack of a voice of black America in politics and education and economics and justice and so many other areas – founded The Black Panther Party. He eventually discovered philosophy and enrolled in the philosophy program at Oakland’s Merritt College and became active in local politics. So Huey began to teach himself to read and enrolled in community college with the intent of studying criminology, to figure out how to beat the legal system as a criminal. He liked to debate and was keen to examine the systems of power around Oakland. He was a failure at school, but he was also insightful and smart and a great listener. After all, if being black was worth something, you’d have to hear at least something about it. All of that omission, Newton stated, made him ashamed of being black. Year after year, he was given a “social promotion” to get rid of him and pass him off on the next class. From the first days of school, Newton noticed that nothing he was learning as applicable to the life of young, impoverished black male in Oakland. The history they taught was a history of white America. Stories in English class weren’t applicable to him. ![]() Despite being a bright and active child, Newton claimed that nothing he heard about in school made any sense to him, and he refused to engage with anything at school. He graduated from high school but was functionally illiterate. ![]() Newton was raised in Oakland, California and educated in the Oakland public school system. It was an idea learned the hard way by Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. “Power to the people” is nothing more than the right of every person to be considered, equally. As defined by the Black Panther Party, “power to the people” was the ability of every person to choose their own destiny, fairly and equally. The core of Beyonce’s statement is a reference to the core of The Black Panther Party’s statement, “All Power to the People”. This was “it’s a black thing, and it’s going to be as important and embedded as Bill Gates”, an uber-symbol of white homogeneous capitalism. It is not “it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand”. What is important (as evidenced by the backlash) is that a statement about the pride in African-American heritage and culture is not coupled by marginalization. Critics are still arguing over whether it is appropriation or homage, but from my perspective, either answer is irrelevant. “Formation” – the song and the Super Bowl performance – was an embrace of black heritage without any sense of marginalization. The song, “Formation”, is Beyonce’s warm embrace of her African-American heritage and culture, with the inspirational coda “you might just be a black Bill Gates in the making”. During the show, Beyonce and her dancers adopted black leather, afros, and berets similar to those worn by the Black Panther Party, which had been formed in 1966 in the same Bay Area. It’s midway through Black History Month, and a couple of weeks after Beyonce released her new single “Formation” via a Super Bowl half-time show that – based on my Facebook feed and what I’ve seen on the internet – caused white people to collectively lose their fucking minds. ![]()
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