Black Power: The Politics of Existence

"Enclosing an article which appeared in The Liberator in June 1970, A. Sivanandan, a Ceylonese living in England since 1958, wrote a covering letter which ran as follows:" I have written this piece with great trepidation. I am not, in the literal sense of the term, a Black man, or an American. Nor do I merit, in terms of action, that title of revolutionary which might allow me an entry into your parleys. I have, further, no right to talk to you about your problems. But if you will extend to me Malcolm X's definition of color, then I see no dichotomy between your concern for your people and mine-united as we are by a common oppression and a common hope. For too long the peoples of South Asia have kept out of your conference chambers—for too long you have kept them out. America is not only in Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia. America is in our countries too-the power behind all our thrones. And the elites of our countries appear less likely to give up power than those in the countries of Nyerere and Obote and Boumedienne. To be Western and English-speaking is still their ambition. Identity-tribal, communal, linguistic-is a ploy to keep native peoples apart. In these circumstances, the thinking, the experience of Black Americans has become very much a part of our own. You reflect our problems, our concerns, our possible solutions. Your furious debate between cultural and revolutionary nationalism has particular bearing on the linguistic nationalism that threatens to tear my own country (Ceylon) apart. Your problem, you see, is mine-in more ways than one. That is my justification for intruding these reflections on you.