(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #230 - Folder Black Revolution: Harana Par?: "This is the revolt that made the Black-es of America exist" (fr)

Harana Par? is a professor of history and geography and activist MRAP, the AFASPA (French 
Association of Friendship and Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa) and Collective 
Communist-POLEX (Foreign Policy). Militant anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and 
internationalist, he looks back on the origins and teachings of black American 
emancipation. ---- AL: Can you introduce yourself to the readers of AL? ---- Harana Par?: 
I am originally from Burkina Faso. After high school, I continued my studies in Oran 
(Algeria) in 1975-76. I am from a generation that admired the armed struggle of 
decolonization in Algeria. In high school, we were sensitive to anti-imperialism and 
internationalism. We read Fanon, C?saire, Nkrumah Anta Diop ... I practice from 1980 to 
1985 as a professor in Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso).

The People's Democratic Republic (PDR) by Thomas Sankara then in full swing, the country 
has great popular mobilisations enthusiastic. Sankara was assassinated in October 1987, 
the forebodings of such a development pushed me into exile in France before, in October 
1985, where since I live, work and campaigning.

AL: What is the situation of minorities in the U.S. today?

Harana Par? : In North America, the state is caporalis? by the oligarchy and the 
military-industrial complex and banking. Blacks and Indians are still in their large mass 
confined in the misery of the ghettos and reserves. The middle classes hit by 
unemployment, job insecurity, leaning towards the emergence of a safe and undemocratic 
state, which typically puts America in line with the old background of slavery racism is 
based. We must not forget that it has historically developed from primitive accumulation 
served by an exterminator of Indians colonialism and slavery of slave trade. These are the 
slave in the U.S. and Brazil economies that serve as a starting point for the formation of 
big capital in the Americas. The White element in America or elsewhere, because socially 
integrated or illusory process of racial domination, the system generally accepted and is 
even identified.

AL: How has emerged of the black liberation movement?

Harana Par? : Resistance to racism by minorities has always occurred in the United 
States. First Native American resistance against colonial extermination and expropriation, 
and long thereafter passive and radical black-es from the years 1960-1970 with the Black 
Panthers and the civil rights movement struggles.

Before fights, building a superimposed black identity of race and class would have 
remained impossible, in that the Black-es have long been trapped in the social 
invisibility. It is the revolt that made the Black-es exist in America, prices mile tips 
and tricks social that emerge from the condition of negro object. The black slave 
subsequently completed the development of a culture-expression of the Exodus and the link 
to Africa (gospel), and re-rewriting of history on two continents.

Early black women with their lives fought systematic rape they have long suffered by the 
white masters, they fled the plantation to prevent the sale, separation from their child 
... In the labor movement, after the abolition of slavery, blacks exploited and not 
integrated into the system by the segregationist laws are structured in communities and it 
is in these ghettos mature riots that put the system in evil and where leave in the years 
1960-1970 the struggle of the Black Panthers. The BPP want revolutionary, class and 
identified the black cause. He advocates the fight against the U.S. government and 
systemic racism in American society. Naturally, such an orientation is doubling or 
tripling of the Black Panthers of internal enemies as Black-es, communists and 
revolutionaries.

AL: What about black feminism?

Harana Par? : The development in these movements of black-feminism, proletarian 
orientation is at odds with the bourgeois feminism that was prevalent in the white 
community and which hitherto had satisfied racism. This means that, ultimately, it is the 
radical feminism of the historically African-American who carries large empowerment 
perspectives on women and gender issues in the Americas.

From the outset, black women, offended and humiliated every day, have invested a matter 
of survival in a matriarchy born under the same conditions of the slave economy, precisely 
where the White his master still held by permanent idleness. Escaping planting to the 
factory or workshop, Black women remained facing recurrent single parenthood, a legacy of 
slavery where the foundation of a stable family remained impossible for any slave. A 
legacy that strength to rely only on itself, and aware of his exclusion of matrimonial 
circuits guarantee annuities. From nothing, they are not heirs, they are struggles of 
women. From this point of view, experiences and examples they illustrate can be used and 
still inspire the struggles of women worldwide.

AL: What lessons for today in France?

Harana Par? : The problem of current struggles in France and Europe in general, is the 
lack of a credible common perspective. The only progress seems to societal, anything that 
revels totally social democracy that prefers harmless socio-economic progress. Faced with 
the shortcomings of the social movement, the bourgeoisie exports the social war against 
the masses in places of social relegation, hence the emergence of concepts such appalling 
racism anti-white, "savages of the republic," communalism ... In short, socio-political 
structures that we struggle to analyze as new data from the class struggle in France. 
Otherwise, the main lesson is the need to link the struggles. We discover they are linked 
together in various local and global scales. This leads us to say that what is happening 
in Africa, Asia and America, is not subject to an exotic elsewhere, but rather a 
contextual aspect of the same reality. It is in this sense that we must analyze and 
understand all the struggles, those of women, racialized-es, immigrants, the working class 
and peasants. It is also important to include all these struggles in the field of class 
struggle and an internationalist perspective. Domination and exploitation are multifaceted 
and unequivocal: it is in this sense that by alienation and narrow or petty secondary 
interests, dominated accept exploitation, domination, social inequality and applaud the 
criminalization of struggles by the dominant order.

Another lesson: do not misunderstand the process of institutional integration, holders of 
democratic and truly intended to expand the market illusions, to deepen and intensify 
exploitation.

Interview by Tony Montana

Case summary:
- The roots of racism: From slavery to the ghetto
- labor movement: black or white, always proletarians
- Malcolm X: a life in black and white
- Malcolm X: Building a Black Power
- The Black Panthers beyond the myth
- The Black Feminism: at the intersection of oppressions
- DRUM: The struggle of blacks in the workplace
- black reformist movements: The pitfalls of bourgeois strategies
- Harana Par? (historian): "This is the revolt that brought into existence the American Black"
- A Black Revolution remains to be done