A very good example was the riots that took place here during the summer. I was in Africa, I read about them over there. If you'll notice, they referred to the rioters as vandals, hoodlums, thieves. They tried to make it appear that this wasn't--They tried to make it--And they did this. They skillfully took the burden off the society for its failure to correct these negative conditions in the Black community. It took the burden completely off the society and put it right on the community by using the press to make it appear that the looting and all of this was proof that the whole act was nothing but vandals and robbers and thieves, who weren't really interested in anything other than that which was negative. And I hear many old, dumb, brainwashed Negroes who parrot the same old party line that the man handed down in his paper.

It was not the case that they were just knocking out store windows ignorantly. In Harlem, for instance, all of the stores are owned by white people, all of the buildings are owned by white people. Black people are just there, paying rent, buying the groceries. But they don't own the stores, clothing stores, food stores, any kind of stores; don't even own the homes that they live in. This is all owned by outsiders. And then these run-down apartment dwellings, the Black man in Harlem pays more money for it than the man down in the rich Park Avenue section. It costs us more money to live in the slum than it costs them to live down on Park Avenue. Black people in Harlem know this. And the white merchants charge us more money for food in Harlem--and it's the cheap food, it's the worst food; and we have to pay more money for it than the man has to pay for it downtown. So Black people know that they're being exploited and that their blood is being sucked and they see no way out of it.  
 
A corrupt, hypocritical system
So finally, when the thing is sparked, the white man is not there; he's gone. The merchant is not there, the landlord is not there; the one he considers to be the enemy isn't there. So, they knock at his property. This is what makes them knock down the store windows and set fire to things, and things of that sort. It's not that they're thieves. But they try and project the image to the public that this is being done by thieves, and thieves alone. And they ignore the fact that no, it is not thievery alone. It's a corrupt, vicious, hypocritical system that has castrated the Black man; and the only way the Black man can get back at it is to strike it in the only way he knows how. [Applause]

They use the press. That doesn't mean that all reporters are bad. Some of them are good. I suppose. [Laughter] But you can take their collective approach to any problem and see that they can always agree when it gets to you and me. They knew that the Afro-American Broadcasting Company was giving this affair--which is designed to honor outstanding Black Americans, is it not? You'd find nothing in the newspapers to give the slightest hint that this affair was going to take place. Not one hint. Why? You see, you have many sources of news. If you don't think that they're in cahoots, watch. They're all interested, or none of them are interested. It's not a staggering thing. They're not going to say anything in advance [about an event] that's being given by any Black people who believe in functioning beyond the scope of the ground rules that are laid down by the liberal element of the power structure....

Another example at the international level of how skillfully they use this trickery was in the Congo. In the Congo, airplanes were dropping bombs on African villages. African villages don't have a defense against bombs. And the pilot can't tell who the bomb is being dropped upon. When a bomb hits a village, everything goes. And these pilots, flying planes filled with bombs, dropping these bombs on African villages, were destroying women, were destroying children, were destroying babies. You never heard any outcry over here about that. And it had started way back in June. They would drop bombs on African villages that would blow that village apart and everything in it--man, woman, child, and baby. No outcry, no sympathy, no support, no concern, because the press didn't project it in such a way that it would be designed to get your sympathy. They know how to put something so that you'll sympathize with it, and they know how to put it so you'll be against it. I'm telling you, they are masters at it. And if you don't develop the analytical ability to read between the lines in what they're saying, I'm telling you again--they'll be building gas ovens, and before you wake up you'll be in one of them, just like the Jews ended up in gas ovens over there in Germany. You're in a society that's just as capable of building gas ovens for Black people as Hitler's society was. [Applause]  
 
 
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