The roots of the modern black political thoughts go back to the 19th century, when black nationalists started to defend their civil rights the most actively. The American society was not that ready to accept political movements concerning their expressing their ideas too strictly and proudly. Indeed, African Americans were proud to be the representatives of their nationality, and this their proud was evolved due to many reasons and due to much suffering in the 19th century. The origins of Black Nationalism lie deeply in the attitude of American political leaders and society to African-Americans. They were still regarded as slaves, so they had chances to change this attitude and situation, and did much to reach their goals.
The origins of modern black political thought lie in the 19th century, specifically after many African-American slaves were repatriated to Liberia or Sierra Leone. In that time, this theme was very popular and came to be of the great actuality in 19th century. Many political leaders turned to be very popular due their emphasizing of this theme in their speeches. The evolution of the black political thought turned to be possible by efforts of many political leaders including Angela Jones, Henry McNeal Turner, Edward Wilmont Blyden, Marcus Garvey (Moses, 1996), Martin Delany, Paul Cuffe, etc. They were able to create the philosophy of the black political thought and made many people believe in the ideas of Black Nationalism.
The black political thought was developing and evolving in many aspects, concerning not only to Black Nationalism in general, but also abolition, radical feminism, neo-conservatism, new black moderate movement. Every part of the black political thought had many representatives who defended their rights to live in free United States of America equally beside the other nations. The evolution of black political thought was related to the formation of new racial consciousness among the African people.
This turned possible to the main political organization that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States and was called Black Power. This community did very much for the formation of the modern black political thought.
In the modern era in American society, black political thought has also special meaning, although the views of African Americans turned to be not as popular as they were before. The thing is that the U.S. society has no problems with nationalism or radical extremism. Nowadays, African Americans have equal rights in comparisons with the representatives of the other nationalities. American society is of the national diverse nature, and every nation has equal rights to live and enjoy life, to elect members to parliament, etc. This is the issue why Black Nationalism is not as of actual nowadays as it was before. Modern black political thought is characterized by moderate nature, concerning political views and the other issues.
The times of struggling against discrimination and slave issues are passed by long ago, and nowadays African Americans can be regarded as equal representatives of the U.S. society. (Price, 2009). In everyday life, the issues related are tolerance in every aspect and field of social and political life. And in modern America, some people regard that there is no need to support African Americans nowadays, as extra care about them can easily lead to the discrimination of the other residents by color of skin, nationality, etc. Some people even talk about discrimination of the so called “whites” for sake of avoiding the discrimination of “blacks”. The equality should be “equal” for every citizen or resident of the U.S. , the lend of dreams and opportunities.
Works Cited
Moses, Wilson. Classical Black Nationalism: From the American Revolution to Marcus Garvey, 1996.
Price, Melanye T. Dreaming Blackness: Black Nationalism and African American Public Opinion, 2009.
