Whites have stake in fighting racism
By Tim Wheeler
Henry Winston, the late national chair of the Communist Party USA, often exhorted
Party members to be bolder in fighting racism. Whites, he said, have a special
responsibility to take the lead in this struggle.
Why? Winston explained that the fight against racism flows from the policy of
working-class internationalism. In the struggle against imperialism, he said, the
working class in each imperialist nation has the responsibility to take the lead in
fighting its "own imperialism."
Failure by social democrats to take a stand against "their own" imperialist
governments in World War I led to the first great split in the Second International.
Leaders of the German Social Democratic Party voted in the Reichstag for war credits
despite the heroic opposition of Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxembourg and Clara Zetkin.
They viewed this social democratic support of German imperialism as a betrayal of the
German working class, the world working class, and the cause of socialism. They went
on to form the German Communist Party, a principled fighter against German imperialism
and especially its most virulent form, Nazism.
In our own country, many social democrats supported U.S. entry into the war against
Germany. But Charles E. Ruthenberg and Alfred Wagenknecht went to prison in 1917 for
opposing the war. They were confined in the Canton, Ohio jail.
The great socialist leader, Eugene V. Debs, visited them there and outside the prison
delivered a fiery anti-war speech that landed him in the Atlanta Penitentiary for 10
years. Ruthenberg and Wagenknecht went on to found the Communist Party USA two years
later on Sept. 1, 1919.
The fight against all forms of national chauvinism and racism has run like a red
thread through the 80-year history of the CPUSA. Henry Winston, himself, went to
prison for that struggle and was blinded by the negligence of federal prison
authorities.
Winnie always told us, "I have lost my sight, but not my vision."
Winston's point is that taking a stand against an imperialist war was an act of
courage and also a declaration of independence from the dominant capitalist ideology:
rabid bourgeois nationalism and war-mongering hatred of other nations.
In an atmosphere of war hysteria, those who took an anti-war stand actually risked
being tarred and feathered or lynched.
Similarly, for a white worker to take a stand against racism means breaking decisively
with capitalist ideology, which spawns white supremacy as the most effective poison
for dividing the working class to insure its own rule.
Racism is also the foundation of wage discrimination in which Black, Latino, and other
oppressed workers are paid lower wages, a source of many billions of dollars in
super-profits for monopoly banks and corporations.
Communists fight racism because it is a moral abomination based upon a big lie of
racial inferiority. But we also fight racism because we understand that the unity of
Black, Brown and white workers is the bedrock of working class unity.
There can be no progress for the working class on any front as long as racism divides
us. Karl Marx put it bluntly when he said, "Labor in the white skin can never be free
as long as labor in the Black skin is branded."
When whites take the lead in the fight against racism, it punctures the lie that white
workers benefit from racist discrimination, so-called "white skin privilege."
In fact, white workers in right-to-work (for less) states, mostly in the South, earn
less than unionized workers, white, Black and Latino, in the North. All workers will
win higher wages and benefits when they unite in strong multiracial unions.
It is crucial to understand this because many white liberals think of the struggle
against racism as a "favor" or "charity" to victims of racist oppression. Communists,
by contrast, fight racism because we understand it is in our own self-interest and the
interest of the working class as a whole.
Understanding that our interests are identical is the first step to seeing ourselves
as one multiracial, multinational, male-female working class.
Monopoly capitalism's hired ideologues realize that the movement for equality has won
many hard-fought battles, not least, in the battle of ideas. The ideology of open
white supremacy is discredited by a majority of the people, including white masses.
Therefore, racism must be packaged so that it seems to be its opposite.
That is why right-wing extremists have targeted affirmative action programs aimed at
ending the deeply entrenched racist discrimination in industry and higher education.
The racists came up with the catch phrases "reverse discrimination" and "racial
preferences" as if affirmative action is a system of government discrimination against
white males. Neo-nazi Klansman David Duke says he has dedicated his life to
"protecting the civil rights of white Europeans," as if white people are the victims.
This is racism's new guise aimed at hoodwinking white masses into joining in a drive
that is re-segregating many industries and our schools of higher education. Passage of
Proposition 209 in California, for example, has drastically reduced Black enrollment
in the University of California system.
That voters pulled the lever for Prop. 209 shows the deep confusion spawned by these
clever racist demagogues. Many thought they were voting against discrimination, not
affirmative action.
The Communist Party USA popularized a slogan back in the 1930s, "Black and white
unite! One class, one fight."
The new form of the slogan is "Black, Brown and white unite!" It should be obvious
that only a majority movement of the people, including white masses, can defeat this
new racist offensive. Black and Latino people cannot win this fight by themselves.
For Communists, there is a tactical issue. In our mass work do we focus exclusively in
Black communities knowing that our anti-racist, working-class message will get a
favorable response? Do we shy away from neighborhoods with a predominantly white
working class? If we do, then we have an ideological weakness: preaching to the choir.
Of course, white comrades have, as Winnie so eloquently told us, a "special
responsibility" to take the struggle into majority-white communities. Everyone who is
active in unions, community or peace organizations has had the experience of seeing
how effective it is when a white person takes the floor to speak out against racism.
It might be the abuses of bosses, landlords and right-wing politicians on issue of
police brutality, evictions, poverty, or discrimination.
Sometimes it is a question of fighting to insure that our own movement is exercising
multiracial and multicultural unity, electing African Americans, Latinos and women to
the leadership of our unions or community groups.
Certainly, that is the thrust of the new leadership of the AFL-CIO, which is going out
aggressively to organize millions of Black, Latino, immigrant and women workers, while
electing a union leadership that "looks like the membership."
For Communists, multiracial unity is more than politics in the narrow sense. It is
also a question of our lifestyle. Wherever we live and work, we try to create what Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. called the "beloved community."
Why? Because our working class is a rainbow of all races and nationalities, men and
women and our Communist Party USA must be as diverse and inclusive as the class
itself. A community like that is the embryo of a new socialist society that will be
born in the new century.
Tim Wheeler is the editor of the People's Weekly World
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