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264 “Think Dialectically, Not Biologically” is a speech delivered in the Department of Political Science at Atlanta University on February 17, 1974. It was part of a weekly seminar for graduate students and faculty during which invited guests—activists, scholars, politicians, and others—addressed issues facing black people in the United States and globally. During the year preceding Boggs’s visit, guests included Julian Bond, Samora Machel, Archie Singham, Maynard Jackson, and Max Stanford. Think Dialectically, Not Biologically This is the first opportunity I have had to speak to an audience in Atlanta, a city that in the last few years has become the center for many tendencies in intellectual and political thinking by blacks. Many black groups from all over the country have held conferences here, and in this process you have had an opportunity to evaluate the movement of the black indigenous forces that erupted in the 1960s and within a few years brought this whole country into its present state of social upheaval. Here in the South, which gave birth to the movement all over the country, we should be especially able to see the difference between the present movement and past movements. For although there have been many revolts and rebellions in other sections of the United States—revolts and rebellions that have led to some social and economic reforms—the present movement that started out in the South was unique. It was unique because at its inception it raised the human question in its most fundamental form. What is the appropriate relationship between human beings, between one man and another? The movement began as a quest for a higher form of human relationships between people, relations not yet shared and not even believed in by most people, but which those who launched the movement believed could or should be shared by people in the United States. In raising the question of human relations so fundamentally, this movement touched every person in the United States, North and South, and for a period of time it seemed that the country—despite the obvious divisions and opposition of many—would be lifted to a new level of human relationships. Instead, today, nearly twenty years after the movement began in the 1950s, we are experiencing the most dehumanized, blackmailing relationships between blacks and whites, and between blacks and blacks. In terms of material conditions, most blacks are much better-off than they were twenty years ago at the beginning of the black movement. But in terms of relations among ourselves as human beings, we are all worse-off. This is the reality we must be willing to face squarely. I shall not attempt to review the many struggles and confrontations that created the movement. You know and have experienced these either directly or indirectly. What I want to emphasize instead is that this kind of struggle could only have been unleashed in the South. This is not just because the South was more racist or more impoverWard .indb 264 12/21/10 9:28 AM Think Dialectically, Not Biologically 265 ished—which it surely was. Rather it is because in the South the tradition of viewing blacks as inferior had been rationalized and given legitimacy by a philosophy. All over the country, the philosophy that one set of human beings is inferior to another on the basis of race was practiced. But in the South this philosophy was not only practiced; it was preached. Therefore the movement that was organized to struggle against racism in the South also had to develop a philosophy as the basis for struggle: the philosophy of the essential dignity of every human being, regardless of race, sex, or national origin. That is why the movement began to draw everybody into it—either pro or con—because it put forward a philosophy with which everybody, regardless of race, color, or sex, had to grapple. In our lifetime we have also witnessed how no social upheaval in any one part of this country can be isolated indefinitely from social upheaval in the rest of this country . Therefore, what started out in the South as a movement whose aim was chiefly to reform the South quickly spread all over the country. Everybody, oppressed and oppressor , was drawn into the confrontation. But when everyone is drawn into a conflict that is as deeply rooted in the history of a society as racism is rooted in this society, there is no telling how far the struggle will have to...

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