Because I was absent for some of the Prof's lectures, I am doing some doc analysis to make up for the missed time and thought it might be fun to post them here in case people want to comment on them.
I went back to read the Panther's 10 point platform after understanding Davarian's thesis about seeing these documents in a global context and was struck by some new observations:
Under the global lense, a few new points jumped out at me:
- The 2nd request for full employment is a very socialist demand and considering the Cold War climate, it was interesting that this point would probably be taken as "communist".
- The 3rd request refers to Germany paying back the Jews for the Holocaust and that America should do the same for their injustices. In fact, they frame the question of restitution in a global context comparing the 6 million Jews with the "50 million" blacks that were slaughtered.
- The 6th request directly links the plight of American blacks with other "colored people of the world...victimized by the white racist government of America"therefor creating the arguement for why they will not participate in military service. I think that it is interesting that they don't use the arguement that minorities were unable to avoid the draft in the same numbers than white people- they put their request and arguement into a more worldly perspective.
- The last request uses the term "black colonial subjects" which relates directly to the concept of Blacks as a colony within the US.
I also thought it was interesting to look at the document through the lense of 2 different readers- if you were a black american sympathetic to cause reading this you might be drawn to the naked truth that the document reveals such as the conditions of the ghettos, police brutality and the right to protect oneself and the most fair point, in my opinion, to be tried by a jury of your peers that include your racial group!
Yet, if you were a white person afraid of the aims of the Panthers, several parts of this document would overshadow the points above such as, using "whatever means necessary" to protect themselves, wanting to excersice their right to bear arms, and most "scary" of all--wanting all black men to be released from prison.
Using these two different lenses it become clear that the perception of the Panthers as a radical, violent reform group really comes from a "white" (obviously not all whites believe this) perspective that only hones in on certain small aspects of their goals and that taken in context, these aims are not as unreasonable as they seem when taken out of context.
I am using this doc with my kids next year and I think I will have them read it without doing any background on the Panthers to see what they pick up on and then push them to try and read the document with multiple lenses to gain new meaning.
Cheers
Jen
Jen Martin
Brookline High School
History Department