Truest statement of the week II

Brown tried to challenge individualism in the Black community. He explained Black college students tended to believe that as individuals they were on a path to success and that they could separate themselves out from the general population, a term to describe prisoners. However, when police or fascist attacks happened, Brown contested, those with middle class aspirations learned to use the term “we” quickly. Individualism was used as a tool to divide and conquer. He argued white people don’t exist as individuals. Patriotic notions that obscure white supremacy make it clear most white people function as a group. Brown was trying to illuminate that the very notion of “the people” or “American people” meant white people. This was a big challenge to a previous generation of Black radicals, such as those influenced by Paul Robeson , who while having Black pride, tried to labor a multi-cultural identity for what was only conceived as Anglo-America.
Brown exposed the notion that when the police stated “we are a minority too” that they were “a thin blue line.” This is false. They express in organized form the ideology of the ruling elite of this country, defense of property and subordination of labor, which the multitudes are socialized to identify. So the police do not function as individuals, though a handful of individual police may mean well.

-- Dr. Matthew Quest, "What H. Rap Brown Says To Us 50 Years Later, Part 2" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).