英语散文:选票还是子弹 The Ballot or the Bullet

　　I hope that the white man can see this, 'cause if he don’t see it you’re finished. If you don’t see it you’re going to be coming -- you’re going to become involved in some action in which you don’t have a chance. And we don’t care anything about your atomic bomb; it's -- it’s useless because other countries have atomic bombs. When two or three different countries have atomic bombs, nobody can use them, so it means that the white man today is without a weapon. If you’re gonna --  If you want some action, you gotta come on down to Earth. And there's more black people on Earth than there are white people on Earth.

　　I only got a couple more minutes. The white man can never win another war on the ground. His days of war, victory, his reign -- his days of ground victory are over. Can I prove it? Yes. Take all the action that’s going on this earth right now that he’s involved in -- tell me where he’s winning. Nowhere.

　　Why some rice farmers -- some rice farmers -- some rice eaters ran him out of Korea. Yes, they ran him out of Korea. Rice eaters with nothing but gym shoes, and a rifle, and a bowl of rice took him and his tanks and his napalm, and all that other action he’s supposed to have and ran him across the Yalu. Why? 'Cause the day that he can win on the ground has passed.

　　Up in French Indo-China those little peasants, rice growers took on the might of the French army and ran all the Frenchmen -- you remember Dien Bien Phu. No.

　　The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa -- they didn’t have anything but a rifle. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare, but they put some guerilla action on, and a -- and a -- and a white man can’t fight a guerilla warfare. Guerilla action takes heart, takes nerve, and he doesn’t have that. He’s brave when he’s got tanks. He’s brave when he’s got planes. He’s brave when he’s got bombs. He’s brave when he’s got a whole lot of company along with him, but you take that little man from Africa and Asia, turn him loose in the woods with a blade, with a blade -- that’s all he needs, all he needs is a blade – and when the sun comes down -- goes down, goes down and it’s dark, it’s even-steven.

　　So it’s the -- it's the ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are filibustering concerning your and my rights, that's the government. Don’t say it’s Southern senators. This is the government; this is a government filibuster. It’s not a segregationist filibuster. It’s a government filibuster. Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, it’s the government. Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government. Any kind of pussy-footing, that’s the government. Any kind of act that’s designed to delay or deprive you and me right now of getting full rights, that’s the government that's responsible.

　　And any time you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it is guilty of today.

　　So those of us whose political, and economic, and social philosophy is black nationalism have become involved in the civil rights struggle. We have injected ourselves into the civil rights struggle, and we intend to expand it from the level of civil rights to the level of human rights. As long as you're -- As long as you're fighting on the level of civil rights, you’re under Uncle Sam’s jurisdiction. You’re going to his court expecting him to correct the problem. He created the problem. He’s the criminal. You don’t take your case to the criminal; you take your criminal to court. When the government of South Africa began to trample upon the human rights of the people of South Africa, they were taken to the U.N. When the government of Portugal began to trample upon the -- the rights of our brothers and sisters in Angola, it was taken before the U.N. Why even the white man took the Hungarian question to the U.N. And just this week Chief Justice Goldberg was crying over 3 million Jews in Russia about their human rights, charging Russia with violating the U.N. charter because of its mistreatment of the human rights of Jews in Russia.

　　Now you tell me how can the plight of everybody on this earth reach the halls of the United Nations, and you have 22 million Afro-Americans whose choices are being bound, whose little girls are being murdered, whose leaders are being shot down in broad daylight. Now you tell me why the leaders of this struggle have never taken it before the United Nations. So our next move is to take the entire civil rights struggle problems into the United Nations, and let the world see that Uncle Sam is guilty of violating the human rights of 22 million Afro-Americans.

　　[short audio gapcontent uncertain]

　　[Uncle Sam] and still has the audacity or the nerve to stand up and represent himself as the leader of the free world. Not only is he a crook, he’s a hypocrite. Here he is standing up in front of other people, Uncle Sam, with the blood of your and mine mothers and fathers on his hands, with the blood dripping down his jaws like a bloody-jawed wolf, and still got the nerve to point his finger at other countries. You can’t even get civil rights legislation. And this man has got the nerve to stand up and talk about South Africa, or talk about Nazi Germany, or talk about Deutschland. Why? No more days like those.

　　So, I say in my conclusion the only way we're going to solve it – we’ve got to unite in unity and harmony, and black nationalism is the key. How we gonna overcome the tendency to be at each others throats that always exists  in our neighborhoods? And the reason this tendency exists, the strategy of the white man has always been divide and conquer. He keeps us divided in order to conquer us. He tells you I’m for separation and you for integration to keep us fighting with each other. No, I’m not for separation and you’re not for integration. What you and I is for is freedom. Only you think that integration would get you freedom, I think separation would get me freedom. We both got the same objective, we just got different ways of getting at it.

　　So I studied this man, Billy Graham, who preaches white nationalism, that’s what he preaches. I say that’s what he preaches. The whole church structure in this country is white nationalism. You go inside a white church that’s what they preaching is white nationalism. They got Jesus white, Mary white, God white, everybody white -- that’s white nationalism. So what he does -- the way he -- the way he -- the way he circumvents the -- the jealousy and envy that he ordinarily would incur among the heads of the church, wherever he go into an area where the church already is you going into trouble, 'cause they got that thing what you call it -- syndicated, they got a syndicate -- just like the rest of the Racketeers have. I’m going to say what’s on my mind 'cause the churches are, the preachers already proved to you that they got a syndicate.

　　And when you're out in the rackets, whenever you're getting in another man’s territory, you know, they gang up on you. And that’s the same way with you -- you ran into the same thing. So how Billy Graham gets around that, instead of going into somebody else’s territory, like he going to start up a new church, he don't -- he doesn’t try to start a church. He just goes in preaching Christ. And he says everybody who believe in Him, you go wherever -- you go wherever you find him. So this helps all the churches and since it helps all the churches they don’t mind fight him.

　　Well, we gonna do the same thing, only our gospel s black nationalism; his gospel is white nationalism; our gospel is black nationalism. And the gospel of black nationalism, as I told you, means you should control you own, the politics of your community, the economy of your community, and all of the society in which you live should be under your control. And once you feel that this philosophy will solve your problem, go join any church where that’s preached. Don’t join a church where white nationalism is preached. Now you can go to a Negro church and be exposed to white nationalism 'cause you are when you walk in a Negro church and a white Mary and some white angels -- that Negro church is preaching white nationalism. But when you go to a church and you see the pastor of that church with a philosophy and a program that’s designed to bring black people together and elevate black people -- join that church. Join that church. If you see where the NAACP is preaching and practicing that which is designed to make black nationalism materialize, join the NAACP. Join any kind of organization, civic, religious, fraternal, political, or otherwise that’s based on lifting the black man up and making him master of his own community.

　　It’ll be -- It’ll be the -- the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.

　　One more thing: I was on a program in Illinois recently with Senator Paul Douglas, a so-called liberal, so-called Democrat, so-called white man, at which time he told me that our African brothers were not interested in us in Africa. He said the Africans are not interested in the American Negro. I knew he was lying, but during the next two or three weeks it’s my intention and plan to make a tour of our African homeland. And I hope that when I come back, I’ll be able to come back and let you know how our African brothers and sisters feel toward us. And I know before I go there that they love us. We’re one; we’re the same; the same man who has colonized them all these years, colonized you and me too all these years. And all we have to do now is wake up and work in unity and harmony and the battle will be over.

　　I want to thank the Freedom Now Party and the goal. I want to thank Milton and Richard Henley for inviting me here this afternoon, and also Reverend Cleage. And I want them to know that anything that I can ever do, at any time, to work with anybody in any kind of program that is sincerely designed to eliminate the political, the economic, and the social evils that confront all of our people, in Detroit and elsewhere, all they got to do is give me a telephone call and I’ll be on the next jet right on into the city.

 

编辑语：马尔科姆·艾克斯这个名字，也许我们并不熟悉，读了这篇文章后，我相信他的坚强，自信，同样震撼着你。“如果你还没有准备付出代价，那么就请不要说什么自由”，请记住这句话吧！