Initial Broadcast Date: October 26, 1971
30 minutes – Color
Two black American authors, John A. Williams and Samuel F. Yette, deal with the crucial question of “Genocide?” on Black Journal’s fourth show of the new season.
Williams deals fictionally with the theme of genocide in his novel The Man Who Cried I Am. A former Ebony associate editor and director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Yette documents what he calls existing factors of genocide in The Choice: The Issue of Black Survival in America.
On Black Journal both articulate their views, with Yette (now a Washington correspondent for Newsweek) pointing to the essential aspects of genocide in our society: “… extreme racial hostility and economic class hostility. We have the vested interests, we have those who make profit out of repression, we have the lack of black social value historically, and also currently we have the loss of economic value on the part of black people.”
Citing another threat of genocide Yette adds, “We have the legalization of the police state as the no-knock search and seizure (and) the preventive detention bill.”
Williams discusses his prophetic “King Alfred Plan,” the “government’s final solution to the black question – vaporization.” He created the plan in his book to answer “What would an administration do … when a large segment of the population … threated the order and established regime?” Since the book has been published, Williams notes that “We all know that practically every city government has announced a contingency plan for dealing with rebellion, i.e. black people in rebellion, and not only city governments, but the federal government.”
Adding credence to that assertion is Yette’s contention that a division of the Justice Department, the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), “is right now building what they call regional detention facilities which, in fact, are concentration camps in virtually every state in the country. That’s going on now.”
Other revelations elicited by the Black Journal discussion on genocide include: attempts to establish mandatory sterilization for unmarried girls; the over-exposure of many black people to doses of X-rays that can cause leukemia, cancer, and sterilization; and different 1970 census questionnaires issued to blacks and minorities and not to the white majority.
“Black Journal,” a production of NET Division, Educational Broadcasting Corporation
Executive producer: Tony Brown
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