London (UNS) By Mail — Stokely Carmichael participated in the International Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London at the Round House.
During his stay here, he also spoke with Black people from Asia, Africa and the West Indies.
On Sunday, July 23, he addressed a massive, mostly Black, session of the Congress and announced he would be unable to attend further meetings next week because he was leaving unexpectedly.
Carmichael’s personal heroes appear to be, according to his quotations and references, Malcolm X, Mao Tse Tung, Che Guevara, Franz Fanon, and Muhammad Ali, whom he called “the world’s greatest.”
The following are some of the points discussed by Stokely during his stay in London:
Carmichael stressed the importance of internationalism and the need for members of the Third World to forget differences in their struggle against imperialism and oppression by the white man.
In response to questions, he refused to criticize Martin Luther King or discuss differences between SNCC and other Black organizations. However, Stokely Pointed out, color is to a certain extent in one’s mind, and Black men have to choose, and if they choose to be white, they should be shot just like any other white man.
Carmichael distinguished between institutionalized racism and individual racism. Individual racism, he noted, is overt, carried on by a few men, and is generally condemned by the rest of white society.
Institutionalized racism is more subtle and subconscious, more massive, and is not condemned but accepted.
“When a church is bombed in Birmingham, and five little Black girls are killed,” Carmichael said, “that is individual racism, and white society condemns it.
“But when every year in Birmingham five hundred Black people die,” he continued, “and thousands more grow up physically and mentally undernourished, that is institutionalized racism, and it is accepted by the mass of white people.”
Hippies, he said, can drop out for two or three years and go right back into white society when they want. If they were a threat to the system, he observed, they would be brutally suppressed.
“The CIA killed Malcolm X, and they probably will kill me,” he said. One white organization was noted by Carmichael as having an effect and doing something worthwhile: PAR (People Against Racism) in Detroit. PAR was represented in London by Frank Joyce of the Fifth Estate.