At 02:38 AM 1/8/01 -0000, you wrote:
>----- Original Message -----
>From: bon moun <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:14 PM
>Subject: Re: RE: [CrashList] depleted uranium
>
>>In the US, IMHO, racism as institution and ideology, is so entrenched and
>>intractible that it can never be solved. That's why I have given up on
>>trying to convert white people and "fighting against racism," per se. The
>>fight here, in my opinion, is not anti-racist--that's a tactical issue.
>>It's for Black liberation--which is similar in many respects to national
>>liberation, which is likely the only struggle in this country with
>>genuinely revolutionary potential.
>
> This relates directly back to the days of slavery,
> to the abolition of slavery - and the commencement
> of wage-slavery... something the whole working
> people share in common.
>
> 'Roots' was watched by a very wide audience -
> many more than those whose great grandparents
> were slaves.
>
> Bill.
I know. I know. When I was a member of the CP I constantly reinforced,
reiterated, restated... what white and black workers had in common. Unity
and all that. But I papered over differences in the process, and that was
dishonest of me. We were oversimplifying a historical development and and
existing reality in order to make it conform more closely to an
oversimplified orthodoxy. For reasons that would take far too much space
in this reply, I have come more and more to believe that the struggle for
African-Americans is not one of unity with white workers--which is holding
African-Americans back in many respects--but for self-determination.
Yes, black folk have a common enemy with white workers, etc. But the
majority of white workers--now--are collaborating with the enemy, so to
speak, in the oppression of blacks, and my own experience tells me there's
no end in sight of that. White workers must (1) expereince the full weight
of the crisis of the system before they are shaken from their ideological
inertia, and (2) will only make equal alliances with black folk when black
folk have enough political power to hold them accountable. So, for me, the
struggle, the central struggle in the USA, is the fight for black political
power--first. And I believe this struggle has much of the character of a
nationalist struggle.
"I am not a Marxist."
-Karl Marx
"Mask no difficulties."
-Amilcar Cabral
"Am I to be cursed forever with becoming
somebody else on the way to myself?
-Audre Lorde
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