revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

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Africans in the world, and to organize and unite black students .
The alienation of black youth was the key to their militancy according
to RAM . This theme appeared in most of the documents but was developed
most carefully in Black Youth : Vanguard of the New World , 1964 .
This document stated that the economic, political and social isolation of
African-American youth from monopoly capitalism and white culture guaranteed
their alienation .
Black youth make up over one-half the population
of black America . The system has displaced them and exposed its contradictions
to them . They have not yet been brain-washed . They are oepn to
attack from all sectors of white society . They are victims of a contradiction
between the black reality and the lies of white America .
They recognize
that the education they received is meaningless and that the system
does not have enough jobs for them . Because of an "intuitive" feeling that
they cannot and will not be allowed to fit in, black youth realize that
they have no alternative "but to go to the streets .
,24
One could argue
that the
causes of alienation of black youth are generally the same causes
of alienation of all black workers . It might be possible to make a good
case for older black employed and unemployed workers as the vanguard because
of their alienation, exploitation at the work place and
potential,
vis a vis, their skills to run industry . Interestingly RAM did not discuss
this possibility when it presented its view of black workers . Instead, it
chose to place greater emphasis on the bitterness and disappointment and
their freedom from the slave mentality as the
chief causes of the greater
militancy of black youth .
Black youth were seen as the "potential warriors of black America"
24 Black Youth : Vanguard of the New World , pp . 1-2 .