Why do people try to equate the phrase Black power and the phrase White power?

[jan46]

From slavery to the Ku Klux Klan to the White supremacist power structure, White power has always meant to dominate other people and to force them to imitate White culture. It is about elitism, abusive violence, conquest, raping, and theft.

Kwame Toure coined the phrase Black power to protest injustice against the Black community and as a rallying cry for Black empowerment. It means to define, develop, and defend what is in the interests of the Black community. Huey P. Newton went on to say that power is made up of 3 components (economic, military, and land). He believed that Black people would have the strength to resist if they had these things and pointed out that after slavery, Black people were robbed of their reparations after years of uncompensated labor and were thrown onto the streets and into prisons. Some had to work for their original enslavers either on the chain gang out of prison or as "free" people who were forced to work of plantations constantly where they were kept as slaves to a growing annual debt they could never pay. Their movements were restricted and Whites made laws limiting them. However, civilizations like Black Wall Street in Oklahoma and Rosewood and communities flourished, but were burned to the ground by Whites. Add New Orleans, Louisiana to this because a White president and governor refused to give the needs of those people any attention. Black organizations were formed to protect Black people from the systematized violence of White gangs like the KKK, White sheriffs, the Feds, and White power structures like banks, schools, businesses, media, armed forces, etc.

[ludano17]

Your a genius!!! I hate when they equate the two. One built on love for our people. and the other built from hate, jealousy and disgust they felt for us. What power is created from the devil. Black power was created for and by God's people to live equally.

[zadok]

what would you say if I said "I hate ******* but not blacks?"

[collyer]

Honestly, I'm gonna be real: It's because people know that both of them come from some kind of racial insecurity, so people judge the terms (White Power" or "Black Power") based on that. No matter how you word it or justify it, that's what people will hear- "RACIAL INSECURITY".

It's just a case of widespread common sense. There's not much more to it than that, I'm afraid.

[wal49]

because they do not realize that the Black Power Movement was a quest for empowerment whereas White Supremacy is based on disempowering others

[sherborne16]

damn your a racist

[salvadore94]

Because people like to make things seem nonoffensive.

Anyone who equates anything about the Black and the White American experience is just bullshitting their way into an argument. They aren't the same.

I noticed that you addressed Katrina. That isn't really a racial issue. That's a "Our federal government is incompetent" issue.

The Negroes have to try and try and try again, man. I didn't know there was a "Black Wall Street"... I'll look that up. But seriously, when one group is trying to stay above the raising floods and the other is twisting the pipes, I don't see how you can equate their cries of "give us dignity, respect us."

Granted, idiots who say White Power and mean it are usually poor and powerless and would be better served working with Blacks against corruption.

[unss94]

My brother the sad reality is power is self evident and needs no fanfare. Therefore as much as we need power as a people what need more is liberation. We need to be liberated from foreign thoughts and foreign actions. We must be free to be ourselves and not who someone has told us we are. We may have worked the cell doors open and can roam freely around the prison but the fact is we are still in prison. Therefore we are not free. Only free men have power. Only those who have created for themselves a sovereignty of their own and them can defend that sovereignty are free. This is the defense between White people and Black power. Those who fight for equality in someone else's world instead on building their own are not free nor do they have power.