Summary
Lorde begins this piece by repeating her argument (made at length in "Poetry is Not a Luxury") that there are no new ideas, only new ways of viewing old ideas. She then describes her changing relationship to Malcolm X. Though he did not much appeal to her during his lifetime, she confesses, she found herself newly drawn to him after his death, realizing that, in his later years, he began to reevaluate many of his earlier stances and reject infighting in Black activist circles. Fundamentally, Lorde says, the struggles of the 1960s have taught activists how complex oppression is, and that it can be internalized and directed within oppressed demographics. In the sixties, activists demanded fast, radical change. As a side effect, people largely forgot that progress is necessarily deep, slow, and inclusive of difference, leading to infighting between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s supporters. Meanwhile, white America took advantage of and even exacerbated this infighting to preserve racial hierarchy. Lorde recalls her own experience in the sixties as a Black lesbian in an interracial relationship, feeling rejected on all sides by those who took offense at some aspect of her identity. This alienation, she remembers, led her to feel helpless in the face of the manifold problems facing people like herself. King, Malcolm X, and other antiracist leaders from the 1960s understood the intertwined nature of various oppressions, Lorde says. To acknowledge and correct the mistakes they made in fighting these oppressions is not to reject these leaders' legacies but to truly honor them.
Indeed, Lorde says, every oppressed person (whether oppressed on the basis of race or on the basis of gender, sexuality, class, or any other factor) must learn to recognize and appreciate difference within the groups to which they belong. This recognition of difference cannot lead to schisms and squabbles on the basis of those differences. After all, the stakes are simply too high. Lorde mentions recent developments in America: women's rights marred by the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, the rise of gay people as a new conservative scapegoat, and growing instances of American imperialism harming nonwhite people abroad. Those affected by one or several of these problems cannot lose sight of their real enemies and begin fighting one another. Meanwhile, wealthy lawmakers are cutting funding to government aid programs and exploiting poor or elderly people. It is no longer possible to imagine that liberation or revolution are available only to one's own demographic. The world's problems have grown so broad and urgent that they require no less than universal liberation. The reigning idea of the sixties—that revolution is a singular occurrence—has been defeated, Lorde says, by the new knowledge that revolution must be constant, ongoing, and shared. Meanwhile, Black people cannot afford to wait for a charismatic new leader like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, especially since any valorized leader is always eventually killed or discredited. Meanwhile, she tells her audience at Harvard University, a university is a perfect place for Black people to be tokenized and their power neutralized with false promises of equality—the opposite of people forming strong coalitions into which they are allowed to bring all of their various identities. Within these coalitions, Lorde says, people cannot repeat the mistake of the 1960s by turning on one another—they must instead examine and redirect that trauma-born instinct.
Next, Lorde mentions some examples of Black people turning on one another, essentially doing the work of white supremacy without intending to. She quotes a harsh official rejection of gay and lesbian students at the historically Black Howard University, and points out that young Black women who begin to complain about their gender-based oppression are often silenced with accusations of homosexuality. This is absurd, says Lorde, since Black lesbians are and always have been integral, beloved community members. Black people have urgent problems, says Lorde, but they have themselves, each other, and nature, and must use these resources to change the world in which they live.
