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African people will have to take a three-way look at themselves, using the past to evaluate the present and using the present to prophesy the future. In our long journey on this earth, we have had few friends, if any. All non-Africans who have come among us or been associated with us have clearly shown that they would betray us any time it was in their self-interest. We have never made good alliances with other people…We know that the most important alliance we need to make is among ourselves.
To be sufficiently argumentative on the subject of black-white alliances, I would have to speak for a week, and I would still barely exhaust the subject: If there is one thing that can be said about black people that has caused a lot of pain, and yet is historically true, it is that politically WE ARE ONE OF THE MOST NAIVE OF PEOPLE. We have been taken in by practically everything and everybody that has come to us. I think this taking in, this betrayal, has something to do with both our weaknesses and our strengths. If you find the strengths of a people, you will find their weaknesses, because the two are closely related.
In the first place, we have been an extremely humane people. We have been hospitable to strangers, and nearly always to the wrong strangers. Almost all of our relationships with non-African people began with gestures of friendship. More than anyone else in the world, we have repeatedly invited our future conquerors to dinner. There is a need to look at black-white alliances going back 2,500 years.
IJohn H ClarkeJohn H Clarke
