Nayeli Yazmin Rodriguez- Love is the Revolution: Politics of Compassion, Self-Love, and Healing in the Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary Marxist organization that started in the late 1960s and lasted until the early 1980s. Their ultimate goal was a revolutionary transformation of society, and they began to see that through in the creation of their community programs, programs which fought for the imminent survival and continual thriving of black communities. The Black Panthers amassed over 50 community programs, such as the free breakfast program for children, liberation schools, free healthcare, legal workshops, and more. They also ran several newspapers featuring articles about recent actions taken by the BPP and general political education to inform community members who might not have had access to the same education. Unfortunately, the United States Government, largely through the FBI, developed a sophisticated counterinsurgency program, named the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that targeted and murdered prominent leaders and members of the Black Panther Party, demonized their community programs, continuously surveilled members, and painted a picture of them in the media that was solely violent and angry. COINTELPRO is a visceral reminder of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to stop any organization that threatens its capitalist colonial regime. The Black Panther Party maintained and displayed community and love despite the harshest living conditions possible, purposeful ignorance of black struggle, and violent murder and attack of their people.
The traumatization of Black folk is built into every single system in the United States, enabling the community to fall into cycles of interpersonal harm, embedding itself in every generation to be passed down. To be successful as a revolutionary actor and fighter is to develop a politics of compassion and love for one's self, one's body, and one's soul. An internal revolution, or healing of the body and mind, is necessary to sustain a revolutionary fighter and the community because, without love, everything will fail. White supremacy is a living manifestation of a community that is devoid of love, feelings, and compassion, and a community that operates out of anger, hatred, and loneliness. What does it look like, what does it mean, what does it feel like to heal ourselves and our community through revolutionary actions, and is it possible? Throughout this article, I aim to uncover Black Panther members' ideas of an internal revolution, or a decolonizing of the heart and mind. I want to find the places where they discuss love and compassion as the food for revolution, and highlight the areas where they fight against the trauma inflicted upon them as part of their revolutionary actions. The process of an internal revolution is one that happens simultaneously with the collective effort of a social revolution. I want to stray away from the narrative that this is an individualistic process, but rather this is one necessary to the broader collective effort to have a revolutionary transformation of not only the self, but the society. Once you begin to decolonize yourself, the world changes around you. The personal and the political are extremely intertwined; I hope to humanize these revolutionary fighters and think about how our feelings inform what we do and how we carry it out. We must have a deep love and trust in ourselves, to give that love and earn that trust from others, to build a sustainable community and revolution.
Trauma is purposefully inflicted upon black communities, specifically Black youth, as a poison that makes them susceptible to harmful cycles. I would like to highlight that along with harmful external cycles such as poverty and violence on the street, this trauma can lead to harmful internal cycles within the body. These internal cycles disconnect the body from the mind. This body-mind connection is so important because it tells us everything we need to know to take care of ourselves. For example, when we feel unsafe in a situation, we might get nauseous or feel discomfort in our chests. This trauma makes it so that there is no way to decipher what you feel and why, making you not trust yourself. Since you don’t know better, you blame the pain and discomfort you feel on yourself rather than recognizing how it is purposely kept from you and inflicted on you by the white capitalist. This causes patterns of self-hate and destruction, deep wounds inflicted on our souls that we often pass down to future generations because we don’t know how to heal them or might not have the right tools.
Micheal “Cetewayo” Tabor discusses this idea of self-destructive behavior and harmful internal cycles through the analysis of drug addiction targeting black communities, specifically black youth. This is one form of targeted violence– one could even say genocide– that leads to this trauma. In “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide,” Cetewayo writes:
“Since the reality of our objective existence seemed to confirm the racist doctrines of White superiority and… Black inferiority, and since we lacked an understanding of our condition, we internalized the racist propaganda of our oppressors. We began to believe that we were inherently inferior to Whites. These feelings of inferiority gave birth to a sense of self-hatred which finds expression in self-destructive behavior patterns.”
As Cetewayo unpacks in this paragraph, the white capitalist has made it so that dehumanizing Black people is a justification for exploitation and oppression. Dehumanization is necessary to legitimate the repression and exploitation of Black people. The widespread dissemination of alleged racial inferiority can lead negatively-racialized people to internalize ideas of this fabricated inferiority, as Cetewayo writes. This can lead a negatively-racialized person to internalize the thoughts of their oppressor, believing what they project to be true for themselves. In reality, this dehumanization and self-hatred is a projection of how these white capitalists feel about themselves. Internalization of this trauma is key to understanding why a person might enact self-destructive behavior patterns because the hate inflicted upon them has been internalized.
When you hate yourself, you don’t see the point in love or compassion because nothing truly possesses that has ever been shown to you. Cetewayo goes on to write:
“The wretchedness of our plight, our sense of powerlessness and despair created within our minds a predisposition toward the use of any substance which produces euphoric illusions. We are inclined to use anything that enables us to suffer peacefully. We have developed an escapist complex. This escapist complex is self-destructive.”
The euphoric illusions that Cetewayo describes, those that enable one to suffer peacefully, are one example of mechanisms that can help a person cope with immiserated conditions in the short term, but that are ultimately counterproductive in the long term. This reading is instrumental to understanding how these mechanisms that Tabor refers to as self-hatred and self-destruction are ultimately profitable and beneficial to the white capitalist because as long as the oppressed engage in self-destructive survival tactics, the white capitalist will benefit from their suffering. The white capitalist knows these protective mechanisms will just keep hurting the oppressed, keeping them in an inferior position:
A characteristic feature of class and racial oppression is the ruling class policy of brainwashing the oppressed into accepting their oppression…this is…carried out by viciously implanting fear into the minds and sowing seeds of inferiority in the souls of the oppressed.
This “inferior” position is intricately crafted and ultimately a lie the white ruling class has imposed on our society to justify their own self-hatred and mistreatment of other human beings. Creating and maintaining these hierarchies is a poisonous tactic that has helped them stay in power. But once one sees these categories are completely made up, one can start to regain a sense of power in oneself and their soul.
Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, reflects on similar ideas in his concept of revolutionary suicide, in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide. There, Newton writes about what he describes as “reactionary suicide”, which results from the attack of the spirit of Black people in the United States. This spiritual death is particularly pertinent because it can lead to despair, and ultimately resignation. Newton writes, “The common attitude has long been: What's the use? If a man rises up against a power as great as the United States, he will not survive. Believing this, many Blacks have been driven to a death of the spirit rather than of the flesh…” This death of the spirit is a manifestation of the internalization of self-hatred that Cetewayo discusses in his reading, which can paralyze Black folk and brainwash them into believing the propaganda that they are worthless and inferior.
Revolutionary suicide then, stems from exposing this brainwashing and finding it inside of you to take down the establishment rather than taking down your own self: “Revolutionary suicide does not mean that I and my comrades have a death wish; it means just the opposite. We have such a strong desire to live with hope and human dignity that existence without them is impossible.” Therefore, revolutionary suicide is the affirmation of the value in one's spirit and being, and the right to live– not just survive but thrive. Connecting to Cetewayo, spiritual death allows these self-destructive cycles to happen because one believes we have no self-worth; that is the lie oppressors have told you, that you are worthless and inferior. Combatting the spiritual death and focusing on rebuilding the internal is necessary before you can take any further steps. One must believe in the inherent quality of their being and their life. If your revolution stems from hate, how much can you get done? Using revolutionary suicide as a foundation for this work, you can slowly start to see the value in yourself and your right to fight for your dignity and your life. In this way, Newton was trying to inspire people to fight against the trauma nonconsensually inflicted upon them and remind people that their lives are worth fighting for.
Other works by Newton demonstrate the ways the Black Panthers were in part formed as a way to heal one another and future generations from the trauma they endured in their childhood as a result of these detrimental systems. Newton discusses the trauma he experienced in the school system, a key site of the spirit of Black children is attacked: “Not one instructor ever awoke in me a desire to learn more or question or explore the worlds of literature, science, and history. All they did was try to rob me of the sense of my own uniqueness and worth, and in the process, they nearly killed my urge to inquire.” As a child, you begin to feel worthless and get discouraged to question the dominant narratives that are being taught, because when you do, you get ridiculed and shamed. This kills your spirit because when you show curiosity you are met with silencing. As a result of this, you become disempowered. Huey didn’t know how to read until he was in high school. He writes about the shame as a result: “...nothing is more painful than a sense of shame that overwhelms you and afflicts the soul…It hurts more when you know that there is no natural process, as in the body, whereby the pain will go away.” What Newton describes is internalized trauma, that place where you feel the most worthless, even more so because you don’t know how to deal with these feelings and blame them on yourself. It was not his fault he felt this way, it was done on purpose. As a child or adolescent who feels this way, you feel more than anything alone and like there is no one there to guide you. You feel scared because no one can protect you, and no one sees you for who you are. Based on his words one could assume Newton felt like this based on his experiences in school, in addition to every other aspect of his life as a Black man.
In order to undo this assault on the spirit and dignity of Black children in West Oakland, the Black Panthers developed community programs to protect and affirm their children. The Panther's first program was setting up armed crossing guards for school children, on streets where other kids had been injured or died as a result of no stop signs. Additionally, they set up liberation schools where the kid's education was made to make them feel seen, heard, and empowered. As I learned about these programs, I felt as if the Panthers were looking to almost go back in time and save their inner children. Because they grew up with this trauma, they were trying to take direct action to make these children feel safe and heard and seen like they never did. Whether or not that was the conscious decision, it is clear in the way that they are so focused on protecting and nurturing their children, to feel empowered to be who they are and trust in themselves. These actions were revolutionary, and in the process could have aided the Panthers in healing their inner trauma, by protecting these children in a way they were never protected.
Newton hints at the idea of an inner revolution, necessary to be a revolutionary fighter. You cannot fight this fight by using the same tactics as the oppressor, which teaches us to be disconnected from ourselves. We must have an internal love and motivation to fight for ourselves to carry out the revolution. Newton writes:
“We must gain security in ourselves and therefore have respect and feelings for all oppressed people. We must not use the racist attitude that the White racists use against our people because they are Black and poor. Many times the poorest White person is the most racist because he is afraid that he might lose something, or discover something that he does not have. So you're some kind of threat to him. This kind of psychology is in operation when we view oppressed people and we are angry with them because of their particular kind of behavior, or their particular kind of deviation from the established norm.”
This example displays how Newton recognized the internal work necessary to humanize and be there for others. As he writes, the reason that racist white people act the way that they do is because they have a deep insecurity and instability within themselves. They operate from anger and hatred, but most importantly fear, making it their mission to make people who are not like them feel the same way. Therefore, psychology, the political, is extremely involved in the political. When we don’t have love for ourselves or our souls, we act out and hurt other people. A lasting and fruitful revolution is one where we operate out of love and compassion for our own being and their trauma. When we operate out of anger though, we reproduce these same oppressive and colonial politics.
Safiyah Bukhari writes about her experience in the Panther, as a self-described an angry Black woman: “No, I wasn’t a revolutionary then. I was an angry Black woman…It was Robert Webb who spent countless hours turning an emotionally charged, undisciplined, apolitical, motivated by hatred girl into a disciplined, politically motivated woman.” Bukhari talks about how understandably angry she was at the oppressor due to the way she experienced life as a Black woman in interactions with the police department as well as just everyday life. Motivated out of hate, she did not want to let the police department or the world for that matter get away with what they did that deeply hurt her. How can we blame her? When you are not given the proper tools or education to process these deep emotions, it is so easy to have emotional outbursts and operate out of a place for anger. When we join revolutionary groups we are all a bit selfish, because we want to make the oppressor hurt just like the way they made us hurt. While this is completely valid, how sustainable is it for us to operate out of hatred?
We will never be satisfied, because the void we are trying to fill by taking these actions ultimately has to do with our own hurt. First, we must be there to heal that in ourselves. Once one can do this, one can join the revolutionary movement truly for the people. We cannot operate out of hate and anger, that is what white supremacy does. Bukhari speaks to this in the passage, saying how she turned anger into motivation and deliberate action. The fight became about the people, not just herself. It seems as if through the process of understanding that anger, she was able to validate it and heal herself, refocusing her attention on understanding the politics behind the fight itself:
“We were embarked on a campaign to change the world, one person at a time. That change begins with rebuilding the character into a revolutionary character, of which the central component is love. That means love for yourself and love of the people.”
The central force of the revolution is love for yourself and love for the people. It can be easy to get off track because we are all flawed humans, with great emotions and with traumas, who are constantly learning. But when we forget love in this work, we stray away from the main idea, building a world that’s motivated by love. When we build a world that is motivated by love, people get what they need by communicating healthily with each other and affirming each other's humanity and greatness. She writes about changing the world one person at a time, which goes to show the internal healing each person must have for this revolution to last and to work.
Through this essay, I hope to show some of many examples of how the Black Panther Party was instrumental not only in creating sustainable programs for the survival and thriving of Black life but also in showing the ways that love and internal healing are necessary to be a valuable asset to the revolution. By talking about one’s pain and patterns of self-destruction that were learned, not inherent, one can begin to forgive oneself. The Panthers showed us that we have the power to break out of this brainwashing, by informing one another of our history and the ways our patterns are not actually our faults. It is not because we are flawed but because they want us to think we are flawed, so we won’t fight back. They showed us we have the power to break out of generational trauma by showing up for one another out of love for each other rather than just hate for the oppressor. In giving back to Black children and the Black community, the Black Panther Party served as the vanguard of love; love for the community, and a love for the soul that perseveres. Revolutionary actions that are fueled by love do have the possibility to heal the self and trauma. More than anything, the Black Panthers were flawed humans just like us, who learned about themselves through their experiences in the party and perhaps healed within the process. The Black Panthers faced immense amounts of death and gained new traumas whilst being in the party, becoming candidates for PTSD as Safiya Bukhari writes. But it is not without the love they too experienced through serving the people and themselves, that they continue to heal despite those traumatizing experiences. An internal revolution is also ever-evolving and changing, it is not a constant but something malleable that grows and changes with each life experience. It is through the Black Panther’s words and actions that we know that to be true. Through the Black Panther’s words and actions, we become motivated to act from a place of love and compassion for ourselves, to serve the people, and to actualize the revolution.
Footnotes
- Micheal "Cetewayo" Tabor, Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide (B.P X Press, 1969), 3.
- Tabor, Capitalism Plus, 3.
- Tabor, Capitalism Plus, 8.
- Huey P. Newton, J. Herman Blake, and Fredrika Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Penguin Books, [2009], 2009), 4.
- Newton, Blake, and Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 5.
- Newton, Blake, and Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 24.
- Newton, Blake, and Newton, Revolutionary Suicide, 54.
- Huey P. Newton, "The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: August 15, 1970," in The Huey P. Newton Reader, by Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, and Donald Weise (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002), 157.
- Safiya Bukhari, "This Is Worth Fighting For," in The War before : the True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison and Fighting for Those Left behind, by Safiya Bukhari, et al. (New York City: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2010), 88-89.
- Bukhari, "This Is Worth," 88.
- Bukhari, "This Is Worth," 93.
Works Cited
Bukhari, Safiya. "This Is Worth Fighting For." In The War Before: the True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison and Fighting for Those Left behind, by Safiya Bukhari, Wonda Jones, Laura Whitehorn, Angela Y. Davis, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, 87-95. New York City: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2010.
Newton, Huey P. "The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: August 15, 1970." In The Huey P. Newton Reader, by Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, and Donald Weise, 157-69. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.
Newton, Huey P., J. Herman Blake, and Fredrika Newton. Revolutionary Suicide. New York: Penguin Books, [2009], 2009.
Tabor, Micheal "Cetewayo." Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide. B.P X Press, 1969.
Bukhari, Safiya. "This Is Worth Fighting For." In The War Before: the True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison and Fighting for Those Left behind, by Safiya Bukhari, Wonda Jones, Laura Whitehorn, Angela Y. Davis, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, 87-95. New York City: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2010.
Newton, Huey P. "The Women's Liberation and Gay Liberation Movements: August 15, 1970." In The Huey P. Newton Reader, by Huey P. Newton, David Hilliard, and Donald Weise, 157-69. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2002.
Newton, Huey P., J. Herman Blake, and Fredrika Newton. Revolutionary Suicide. New York: Penguin Books, [2009], 2009.
Tabor, Micheal "Cetewayo." Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide. B.P X Press, 1969.