The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto

“In the abstract, when there were few Blacks in northern cities, people there could look down their noses at the racists in the South. But, when hundreds of thousands of Black people showed up, those northerners had to live up to their ideals. They didn’t. Instead, they employed many of the same brutal tactics—oppressive policing, housing discrimination, restrictive employment—that southern racists had used to keep Black folks subordinate and separate.”

Directly referencing the immoral equivalency of the North and South, Blow makes his case against the white liberal and moderate North. While on the surface white northerners appear genteel and progressive, white supremacy is insidious and has taken hold of every corner of the country. Blow makes this point to later support his proposal that Black people should separate from northern societies and return to the South.

“‘We, who had the skills and the experience’ to help provide the economic security that Black people needed ‘did not share that with our less fortunate brother and sister’ as had been done for them, Tim told me.”

Though he does not seek to divide Black people, Blow occasionally refers to the close connection between the Black elite and white supremacist structures. In advocating for northern mass migration, many elites and advocacy groups preached assimilation and submission to integrate into white society, but they failed to advocate for their own people once they arrived in the North. This quote from Timuel Black stresses his feelings of regret for how the elite abandoned their people to poverty and violence.

“At the same time, the Great Migration did to the Black South what the transatlantic slave trade had done to West Africa: it drained it of its young and vibrant, stunting its growth and reshaping its culture.”

Examining the deleterious effects of the Great Migration, Blow makes a damning comparison between it and the 200-year legacy of slavery. Each event dispersed population densities, making indigenous and Black migrants particularly vulnerable to violent white supremacist structures. In turn, both events delayed self-determination and in some ways made it entirely unattainable.

“Where are the radical thinkers?”

During a lecture with the Ford Foundation, musician and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte critiqued President Barack Obama for stifling radical proposals that advocate for Black power. Belafonte decries the president’s effect on contemporary activists and intellectualism, and puts into the miasma a call for people to find a different way. Blow takes up this challenge after ruminating on Belafonte’s words.

“While politicians, particularly presidential ones, seek to entice fickle white votes, they simply seek to excite Black ones. They target them with policy and us with passion, a head-versus-heart strategy that yields a reality of wallet and wellbeing on one side and showy practices and shallow promises on the other. A return to the South in numbers capable of making Blacks able to deliver a state or to run it would permanently alter this dynamic.”

Since Black density currently exists in pluralities, a level of tokenism is involved in attracting Black votes. In its current state the Black diaspora is powerless to demand serious political attention and to wield it on a state or national level. By creating density that translates to a majority, Black power will alter the whole of American politics.

“If the sidewalk could have opened it would have swallowed him. It was a Black man’s ancestral muscle memory of submission, of surrendering for survival.”

Blow makes this bleak portrayal of police harassment and the threat of violence to personalize the Black struggle for the reader. Beyond its voyeurism, this passage speaks to the inherent struggle to survive in white society and the development of a survival instinct that hinges on submission. To Blow, there is no difference in the white slaver and the white police officer threatening violence for subjugation.

“These stops have become a rite of passage for Black men, a bonding in trauma, a ritual we try our best to laugh off at the barbershop or bar.”

Concerning the Black American experience, Blow almost casually references the community aspect of surviving and retelling stories of near-death experiences. The systemic oppression that threatens death at any wrong move hovers over the entire community, and there is no other way to refer to these common experiences except to reflect upon them as realities that every community member suffers as part of growing up and existing.

“I believe that what we’re witnessing now is a transference of terror: you can draw a distinct line between the lynching that Blacks in the South fled during the Great Migration and oppressive policing, including the shooting of unarmed men, that we see today, many in the destination cities.”

In contrast to traditional histories that delineate eras of racial strife and struggle, Blow directly connects historical violent oppression in the South with contemporary violent suppression in the North. Each reflects the other, with a continuation of policies and beliefs that spans beyond these prefigured eras. This figures into Blow’s own theory on the life cycle of racism.

“Systems now do the bulk of the work; there is a perpetualness to racialized poverty and oppression.”

Despite attempts to frame individual leaders as designers and enablers of the white supremacist system, in truth the system is so meticulously crafted and maintained that it transcends any single guilty perpetrator. Modern white supremacy operates much like a bureaucracy, casually suppressing Black people for socioeconomic and political “outcomes.” It is because of this insidious nature—and the willful complacency of white people who perpetuate it—that Blow believes separation is the best method for Black self-determination.

“Part of what’s radicalizing young white men in destination cities and states, it seems to me, is a backlash against a decade of being chastised into checking their privilege and feigning shame or contrition over their historically oppressive identity. This is a backlash against a backlash, privilege rearing to battle antiprivilege.”

Attempting to explain the rise of white nationalism in the North, Blow directly ties it to issues surrounding masculinity, femininity, identity, and the white inability to accept social responsibility. It is a frightening hydra that seems insurmountable, and one that increasingly stands directly in the way of Black self-determination. Blow believes that these developments in white supremacy are all reactions to progress in achieving Black power.

“All of this underscores my contention that racial egalitarianism is often, by necessity, a long-distance love affair.”

Despite the liberalization of Vermont, the state still maintains the white supremacist structure. It is an uncomfortable duality, and one that Black people should not have to endure to achieve equality. In light of this, Blow believes that while integration is a fine and noble thought, it is ultimately a pipe dream.

“Activism becomes an exercise in credentialing, a way of position in pursuit of power. These missives often represent as desperate longings by the authors to be anointed by white liberals and the white academy, collectives that address Blackness from a clinical distance, turning Black struggle into anthropology and Black pain into pedagogy.”

Maintaining his cynicism about contemporary movements and displays of protest, Blow outright states that much of what constitutes “making a stand” is for the benefit of the protestor, not the movement. In effect, the most visible and loud protesters gatekeep for others and turn the entire endeavor into another elitist faction. These fickle displays placate the system they outwardly seek to disrupt and destroy, and are a detriment to achieving real progress.

“I believe that revolution must extend beyond household self-sufficiency and pure economics and reach high into the power structures that govern, I believe that central to Black liberation is the assumption of power, the constitutional seizure of it.”

In arguing for Black regionalism, Blow makes the case that social and economic opportunities are entirely dependent upon seizing power. That power, tempting as it may be in local council meetings and court rooms, must extend to a state level, where the constitution protects the rights of majority rule to determine a state’s future.

“I am not advocating for a Black nationalism, but a Black regionalism—not to be apart from America but stronger within it, through consolidation and concentration. The goal is not sedition but liberty.”

Blow clarifies his intentions for Black empowerment. While some would argue that Black power originates from the community’s complete separation and migration out of the United States, Blow believes Black people have the moral authority and right to seize the South as their birthright. By establishing a Black powerbase in the US, Black people can ensure they have a national advocate, whether they live in the South or not.

“I have known the nurturing, protective aura of majority-Black places.”

To persuade readers to adopt his proposition, Blow highlights the opportunities offered by majority-Black communities. Blow believes that a Black community is a restorative environment necessary to support Blackness in all its forms. He offers his own experiences in these environments, where he felt love, safety, and encouragement, and hopes such communities will provide the same relief and opportunity to Black migrants as they do to those who born within them.

“And so, revolution became an idle phrase of Black resistance, hollowed out by lack of definition and direction. We moved to a place where the revolutionary-ism was overtaken by the even less well delineated ‘radicalism,’ a term now so ubiquitously applied and awarded without circumspection hat it has nearly been stripped of substance.”

Blow takes issue with the “radical” methodologies and movements of late. He complains that people are often more interested in the labeling of their ideas than in their content, and that applying the term “radical” to his own proposition misses the point. What truly makes something radical is its uniqueness in creating accountable change.

“And yet hoping is rooted in the Black experience in this country and pervades Black politics. Historically it has consumed the rhetoric of Black politicians and the rhetoric directed at Black voters. Andre C. Willis, an assistant professor oof religious studies at Brown University, describes African-American hoping as a tradition that has been ‘crafted over centuries of despair and dehumanization.’ Hope was an essential commodity among the downhearted, often the only light visible from the darkest of places.”

Figuring highly in the Black experience is the rooted belief that something better is coming. It presents as both cost and benefit, particularly when used by politicians in the presence of Black voters. However, hope would not be such a central component were contemporary conditions good for the Black American. Instead, hope is all the Black American has when considering the world they reside within.

“Black people sanctified American Christianity. They brought it to a living model of persecution, a perfect suffering and a perfect sustenance.”

Although religion has helped sustain Black people, Blow feels that it has also been used to justify pain and suffering. These beliefs can be and are co-opted by those who would placate and justify the white supremacist system. Even still, Black people have taken the white Christianity forced upon them and co-opted it for their own purposes.

“The experts tell us that the browning of America and the rise of interracial marriage will one day make race itself a moot point.”

Blow is contemptuous of those who tell Black people to wait and see the world change. He attacks the notion that America’s color will naturally change in a substantive way; even if it should change, he believes there are far too many differences between people of color to rely on other groups in the pursuit of Black self-determination. Blow asserts that Black Americans have waited long enough; there is no greater time for action than now.

“To many, being part white was still better than being all Black, especially when considered through the white gaze.”

Colorism extends beyond white supremacy and into the hearts of Black communities. It is a side effect of white supremacy, but Blow warns against further incorporation of colorism in the schema of social standing. Blackness as a spectrum is valuable, and its individual shades are inconsequential to the beauty and value of the individual person.

“But [Barack Obama] also went on to draw a harmful false equivalency between Black people’s anger over centuries of anti-Black, white supremacist terror and white people’s anxiety in response to the relatively recent phenomena of economic stagnation and displacement, affirmative action and crime: in his words, ‘a similar anger exists within segments of the white community.’”

Extending beyond his criticism of historical Black intellectuals, Blow criticizes President Obama for similar reasons as Harry Belafonte. Like Belafonte, Blow believes the president placated white supremacy by advocating against radicalism. Further, Blow criticizes the president for justifying white rage by equating it to Black anger.

“Although I always earned more money, it seemed to me that [Janean] had always lived more life, not with fancy things or extravagant vacations or starred restaurants. She reaped her joy in contentment and fulfillment. She reaped it from an environment that honored her.”

Although Blow was fulfilled by his early life in majority-Black communities, he reflects on the negative aspects of attempting to live in a white-dominant society. In comparison to his friend Janean, he has enjoyed greater opportunities and earns more money; however, she has greater happiness. This is because she exists in a space that values her, something that was missing in Blow’s upper-class circles, as elitism has roots in white supremacy.

“Beyond the push of state terror and oppressive, even lethal, neglect, and the pull of political power, purchasing power, and overall economic opportunity and possibility, there is, I believe, a spiritual, restorative need for the collective Black family to reunite.”

In the final chapter Blow makes a final passionate attempt to convince the reader of the inherent value of a Black community. It is a space in which Black wealth and prestige are earned; it is also a spiritual realm, one that reinvigorates the souls of people held under oppression for so long. Within a Black community, Black people will experience the freedom and joy of unimpeded dreams.