"Black is beautiful"

We spoke last Wednesday about the rise of the Black Power movement. Pauli Murray called it also "Black Liberation, and in its most extreme form, Revolutionary Black Nationalism"(395). The movement became a symbol of survival and self-respect through racial solidarity instead of the interracial cooperation of the "old" civil rights movement. Thus "Black and white together, we shall overcome" became "Black is beautiful." I was curious as to how people of mixed descent fit into the new binary system of civil rights: for example, Pauli Murray, as a woman of "mixed racial origins with all their Ishmaelite implications" (391). She wrote that since she grew up as one of only a few mixed children, she had to constantly prove herself- to her, "beauty is as beauty does." I would generalize these three quotes as, respectively, pride in humanity, pride in race, and pride in individualism. I'm curious to know what people think about these relationships.

Julie Zhao