Harana Par? is a professor of history and geography and activist MRAP, the AFASPA (French
Association of Friendship and Solidarity with the Peoples of Africa) and Collective
Communist-POLEX (Foreign Policy). Militant anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and
internationalist, he looks back on the origins and teachings of black American
emancipation. ---- AL: Can you introduce yourself to the readers of AL? ---- Harana Par?:
I am originally from Burkina Faso. After high school, I continued my studies in Oran
(Algeria) in 1975-76. I am from a generation that admired the armed struggle of
decolonization in Algeria. In high school, we were sensitive to anti-imperialism and
internationalism. We read Fanon, C?saire, Nkrumah Anta Diop ... I practice from 1980 to
1985 as a professor in Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso).
The People's Democratic Republic (PDR) by Thomas Sankara then in full swing, the country
has great popular mobilisations enthusiastic. Sankara was assassinated in October 1987,
the forebodings of such a development pushed me into exile in France before, in October
1985, where since I live, work and campaigning.
AL: What is the situation of minorities in the U.S. today?
Harana Par? : In North America, the state is caporalis? by the oligarchy and the
military-industrial complex and banking. Blacks and Indians are still in their large mass
confined in the misery of the ghettos and reserves. The middle classes hit by
unemployment, job insecurity, leaning towards the emergence of a safe and undemocratic
state, which typically puts America in line with the old background of slavery racism is
based. We must not forget that it has historically developed from primitive accumulation
served by an exterminator of Indians colonialism and slavery of slave trade. These are the
slave in the U.S. and Brazil economies that serve as a starting point for the formation of
big capital in the Americas. The White element in America or elsewhere, because socially
integrated or illusory process of racial domination, the system generally accepted and is
even identified.
AL: How has emerged of the black liberation movement?
Harana Par? : Resistance to racism by minorities has always occurred in the United
States. First Native American resistance against colonial extermination and expropriation,
and long thereafter passive and radical black-es from the years 1960-1970 with the Black
Panthers and the civil rights movement struggles.
Before fights, building a superimposed black identity of race and class would have
remained impossible, in that the Black-es have long been trapped in the social
invisibility. It is the revolt that made the Black-es exist in America, prices mile tips
and tricks social that emerge from the condition of negro object. The black slave
subsequently completed the development of a culture-expression of the Exodus and the link
to Africa (gospel), and re-rewriting of history on two continents.
Early black women with their lives fought systematic rape they have long suffered by the
white masters, they fled the plantation to prevent the sale, separation from their child
... In the labor movement, after the abolition of slavery, blacks exploited and not
integrated into the system by the segregationist laws are structured in communities and it
is in these ghettos mature riots that put the system in evil and where leave in the years
1960-1970 the struggle of the Black Panthers. The BPP want revolutionary, class and
identified the black cause. He advocates the fight against the U.S. government and
systemic racism in American society. Naturally, such an orientation is doubling or
tripling of the Black Panthers of internal enemies as Black-es, communists and
revolutionaries.
AL: What about black feminism?
Harana Par? : The development in these movements of black-feminism, proletarian
orientation is at odds with the bourgeois feminism that was prevalent in the white
community and which hitherto had satisfied racism. This means that, ultimately, it is the
radical feminism of the historically African-American who carries large empowerment
perspectives on women and gender issues in the Americas.
From the outset, black women, offended and humiliated every day, have invested a matter
of survival in a matriarchy born under the same conditions of the slave economy, precisely
where the White his master still held by permanent idleness. Escaping planting to the
factory or workshop, Black women remained facing recurrent single parenthood, a legacy of
slavery where the foundation of a stable family remained impossible for any slave. A
legacy that strength to rely only on itself, and aware of his exclusion of matrimonial
circuits guarantee annuities. From nothing, they are not heirs, they are struggles of
women. From this point of view, experiences and examples they illustrate can be used and
still inspire the struggles of women worldwide.
AL: What lessons for today in France?
Harana Par? : The problem of current struggles in France and Europe in general, is the
lack of a credible common perspective. The only progress seems to societal, anything that
revels totally social democracy that prefers harmless socio-economic progress. Faced with
the shortcomings of the social movement, the bourgeoisie exports the social war against
the masses in places of social relegation, hence the emergence of concepts such appalling
racism anti-white, "savages of the republic," communalism ... In short, socio-political
structures that we struggle to analyze as new data from the class struggle in France.
Otherwise, the main lesson is the need to link the struggles. We discover they are linked
together in various local and global scales. This leads us to say that what is happening
in Africa, Asia and America, is not subject to an exotic elsewhere, but rather a
contextual aspect of the same reality. It is in this sense that we must analyze and
understand all the struggles, those of women, racialized-es, immigrants, the working class
and peasants. It is also important to include all these struggles in the field of class
struggle and an internationalist perspective. Domination and exploitation are multifaceted
and unequivocal: it is in this sense that by alienation and narrow or petty secondary
interests, dominated accept exploitation, domination, social inequality and applaud the
criminalization of struggles by the dominant order.
Another lesson: do not misunderstand the process of institutional integration, holders of
democratic and truly intended to expand the market illusions, to deepen and intensify
exploitation.
Interview by Tony Montana
Case summary:
- The roots of racism: From slavery to the ghetto
- labor movement: black or white, always proletarians
- Malcolm X: a life in black and white
- Malcolm X: Building a Black Power
- The Black Panthers beyond the myth
- The Black Feminism: at the intersection of oppressions
- DRUM: The struggle of blacks in the workplace
- black reformist movements: The pitfalls of bourgeois strategies
- Harana Par? (historian): "This is the revolt that brought into existence the American Black"
- A Black Revolution remains to be done
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» (en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL #230 - Folder Black Revolution: Harana Par?: "This is the revolt that made the Black-es of America exist" (fr)