On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 3:06 PM, Jerry Monaco <[email protected]> wrote: > Do you mean to say that people of color won't or can't support imperialism? > It is impossible for people of color to support imperialism?
I certainly don't mean the above. What I mean is that the empowerment of formerly exploited groups of people in an imperialist system introduces some fundamentally new contradictions into its power structures. > So will Obama, a person of color, dismantle the regional commands of the > so-called "Defense" Department? Will he suddenly reverse himself and not > support Israel, even though he was sympathetic to the recent U.S.-Israeli > attack on the Palestinians? Will Obama withdraw troops from Afghanistan or > from Germany or Japan or Colombia or Indonesia? Will Obama stop supporting > the corporate exploitation of Central America? Hopefully a good fraction of the above. Almost certainly not all of the above. > By the way are Colin Powell and Conde Rice imperialists? As far as I can > tell they always supported imperialism. There is a very big difference between Powell/Rice and Obama: unlike the election of Obama, the average black person did not celebrate or feel empowered by the appointment of Colin Powell. Obama can, of course, still become an old-school imperialist, but he can only do so by betraying his constituency in which case most colored people will continue to be exploited and not part of the imperialist elite. The cynics on PEN-L seem to think this is already happening, but I think this is not at all clear. > Let me ask you, specifically. What will change in the system and > institutions of U.S. imperialism now that Obama is in power? As I have repeatedly argued here, there is a real possibility here for progressive change though this is by no means inevitable. This depends to the extent to which Obama's minority constituencies are in fact empowered under his Presidency. Some possible reforms are in trade-related areas such as NAFTA, forcing poor countries to accept agricultural imports etc; end of war in Iraq (and hopefully) Afghanistan; no NATO expansion, military bases or missile shields in Eastern Europe and Central Asia etc. -raghu. -- OUT TO LUNCH - If not back at five, OUT TO DINNER! _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
