Stokely Carmichael – Part 1: The Initiator of Black Power
Feb, 27, 2009
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Stokely Carmichael speaks at the University of California's Greek Theater, Berkeley, California, October 29, 1966, jammed with 14,000 people. (AP Photo)
This blog came primarily into being because I wanted to publish portions of my research on the black activist Stokely Carmichael and his rhetoric of Black Power.
I have always been fascinated by the strategic use of language and when I stumbled upon the following passage of Joshua Meyrowitz’s “No sense of Place” I decided to dedicate my attention to Carmichael’s rhetorical style.
“When Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael found himself attracting media attention in the late 1960s, for example, his access to a larger social platform turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing. In the shared arenas of television and radio, he found himself facing at least two distinct audiences simultaneously: his primary audience of blacks, and an “eavesdropping” audience of whites. In personal (unmediated) appearances, he had been able to present two completely diffrent talks on Black Power to black and white audiences, respectively. But in the combined forums of electronic media, he had to decide whether to use a white or black rhetorical style and text. If he used a white style, he would alienate his primary audience and defeat his goals of giving blacks a new sense of pride and self-respect. Yet if he used a black rhetorical style, he would alienate whites, including many liberals who supported integration. With no clear solution, and unable to devise a composite genre, Carmichael decided to use a black style in his mediated speeches. While he sparked the fire of his primary audience, he also filled his secondary audience with hatred and fear and brought on the wrath of the white power structure”.
In my dissertation I analyzed and compared two speeches of the black activist, one addressed to a primarily black audience, the other one to a primarily white audience. My principal intention was to examine the distinctive characteristics of what the sociologist Joshua Meyrowitz referred to respectively as Carmichael’s black rhetorical style and white rhetorical style.
In order to support my analyses/interpretations of Carmichael’s critical discourses towards the United States I had to investigate in various directions, since the black activist not only accused the American social and political system for being permeated by racism, but stressed that even the nation’s cultural expressions upheld ‘white supremacy’.
In my next posts I will first of all introduce my readers to the person Stokely Carmichael and will successively concentrate on his political views before venturing on his public speeches.
Continuation of text → Stokely Carmichael – Part 2: Carmichael’s Youth, from Port of Spain to New York City
Posted in Black Activists, Semantics, Stokely Carmichael by |
