Question

We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations–supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Black Panther Party Platform
October 1966

Read each statement about this section from the 10-Point Platform. Decide whether it is true or false.
This section from the Platform was asking for things to help achieve racial equality.

Answer 1

False.

While it demands basic rights and material needs (land, housing, education, justice, etc.), the passage is framed as a call for Black self-determination—including a U.N.-supervised plebiscite limited to Black colonial subjects to determine their national destiny—rather than simply asking for integration or equal treatment within the existing political order.