II In 1938, the courts ruled that state colleges had to admit Negroes if segregated schools were not available to them. The solid wall of re action was beginning to crack. Under the conditions of the fascist of fensive within the USNA, the militant National Negro Congress was formed in 1936. The Congress pioneered the idea of a coordinated drive by a united front of Negro organizations. They met with some notable successes. This left progressive motion forced such traitorous elements as the rightwing socialist A. Phillip Randolph and Walter White to attempt to take the hegemony of the Negro movement away from the left. The result was the 1941 March on Washington and the resulting Fair Employ ment Practices Commission appointed by Roosevelt. At the end of the war, the NAACP, speaking in the name of the Negro people, pre sented its famous “Appeal to the World, a Statement on the Denial of Human Rights to Minorities in the Case of Citizens of Negro Descent in the United States” and an “Appeal to the United Nations for Redress.” An embarrassed USNA government through the state department conceded that if it were to continue the ideological struggle against Communism, it would have to lend a more sympathetic ear to the demands of the Negro people. The gutter politician, Truman, was forced to appoint a Com mittee on Equal Rights. Some independent struggle on the part of the trade unions as well as favorable rulings by the courts, broadened the employment oppor tunities for Negro workers. The 1954 school decision, Montgomery Alabama 1955, the anti-lynch law and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act, just about completed the victories in the legal and trade union field. Then came that massive wave of rebellions and riots across the next two decades. Black Generals and Admirals no longer caused a stir by their presence. Negro politicians were to be found in the Senate and the House. Negro Mayors were elected in the large cities of the North and in a number of small southern towns. Two Negro Lt. Governors were elected in states with less than 5% Negro vote. Bull Connor is dead and Governor George Wallace has appointed a Negro to his Executive Committee. To any fair-minded outsider during the 1970s and 1980s, it would appear as if the battle was won. No wonder the African American Liberation Move ment began to fragment and entered into disarray. Legally everything has been won. In fact, little had been won. When the fight for fair housing began, every city had scant pockets of poverty-stricken African Americans locked into areas of poor sanitation, no hospitals and poor schools. The so-called Fair Housing Act have failed to prevent the transformation of huge sections of cities into stinking putrid proletarian slums where police murders and organized gang violence have far stripped the best the Klan could do. The so-called integration of armed forces has not removed the Black soldier from the doing the labor battalions, but has converted him into a murderous infantryman. The struggle to gain the equality, a necessary struggle, only added a black hand alongside of the white hand dropping bombs of innocent peoples. One can be sure that the Iraqi peoples cannot see any progress in their children and folks being murdered by blacks rather than whites. Is it not clear to all that these goals of the struggles of the masses have had the tendency to turn into their opposite? It is not clear that the underlying cause is the colonial position of the old Black Belt Nation under the political grip of generations of reactionary Southern politicians? It requires no special thinking to understand that the plight of the African American in our history begins in the South under slavery and as long as the South as a region lags behind the North economically and remains the bastion of political reaction, there cannot be a broad and stable basis for real equality. The greatest and longest history of inequality in American has always been regional, North and South, with the blacks being on the very bottom of the economic, political and social ladder. To this very day Southern reactions devises newer and newer means to deny the vote to Blacks and this was made perfectly clear in Florida during the Presidential election of 2000. In this instance hundreds of thousands of blacks were simply purged from the voter rolls. Nationwide blacks are incarcerated and given long felony sentences to deny them the vote. Bitter history of the struggles of all oppressed peoples proves that unless the chain of imperialism is broken, oppressed and oppressor peoples cannot be integrated except on the basis of continued inequality. There of course have been some gains, especially for the African American bourgeoisie, which the government has made an effort to buy and to a great extent has succeeded. If the African American people were to relinquish, for one moment, the struggle to improve their lot, they would immediately be reduced to the level of slaves. What is needed is a new perspective. What is needed is the leadership of a different class, with a modern perspective on class, nationality and the color factor in our history. Much has changed during the past half century and our perspective must change to express reality and circumstances more accurately, while keeping in mind the real history involved. Under the ideological leadership of the Negro "talented tenth," which could not help but be its national bourgeoisie, the goal of the various classes among the Negro people of achieving equality with the corresponding class of Anglo-Americans was perfectly normal since, such equality would make the sky the limit for the African American bourgeoisie. But within this concept and logic is that the black unemployed and homeless would be equal to the Anglo-American unemployed and homeless. The black laborer would be the equal of the Anglo-American laborer. To limit the drive for liberation and freedom to equality of poverty cannot be acceptable to the African American masses, but even this "equality" is impossible under a capitalism, founded upon and owing its existence to the institution of slavery and structural privileges to the Anglo American. One of the most progressive results of the struggles of the 1960s and 1970s was the momentary massive growth in numbers of African American industrial workers, relative to the Anglo-American workers, especially within the industrial unions. For a moment no one could speak of the need of unity of the proletariat without addressing himself first of all to the tasks of the agenda of the black worker. This created a favorable objective condition for many groups to momentarily endorse and raise the goal of socialism as the political context for the emancipation of the African American people. The other side of this long history is that even in the most democratic of industrial unions, the blacks still faced and continue to face unyielding structural roadblocks and the legacy of centuries of attitudes they must continue to fight. However, this does not yet complete the picture. When fundamental things change, everything dependent upon them must also change. This does not imply that results of change are direct or immediate. However, scientific thinking demands that we find the motivation for change, place such changes in their proper context and make some estimate of their consequences. Four elements have intervened to change this situation. First and foremost was the determined and militant struggle of the African Americans themselves. Seldom in history has such a small group — around 12 percent of the population — carried out such a heroic struggle against such a pervasive social ideology and against such a brutal state apparatus of oppression. Without this element, none of the other elements could have brought about change. The second element was the mechanization of southern agriculture. That was the basis of the freedom struggle. Third, the Cold War was the context for the totality of the final stage of that struggle.The struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States opened doors that would have remained shut. This political dynamic is why many black communists have always muted or been extremely careful in with any real or perceived criticism of the Soviet Union. The Soviets constantly used African American oppression as one of their most effective propaganda weapons in the struggle for allies in the "Third World." Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson — all were forced by the State Department to take steps in dismantling legal segregation.The fourth element was the introduction of electronics in production and communications and the subsequent globalization of the commodity and labor market. Today, we must describe the African American question within this context. What we are actually dealing with is a lengthy process that spans our entire history and each stage of the struggle requires its own understanding and projections. The end of one stage of the struggle came with the African Americans using their newly won political power — often in alliance with progressive whites — to elect their representatives into the various organs of government. An example of this was the situation around Carl Stokes who in 1967 had been elected the first African American mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. Black kids walking through their changing neighborhood were attacked by whites with baseball bats and one of the whites was stabbed to death. (The stabber was eventually acquitted on self defense.) A white mob prepared to storm the mayor's mansion. When white police said they could not stop the mob, the black police who had organized themselves to protect the mayor warned the white police that they would open up with automatic weapons if the mob crossed the last street between them and the mansion. Black police were defending the black representative of the black community. Or take the case of Harold Washington, former mayor of Chicago.With his election, all the white council members, save one, formed a solid bloc of opposition that practically stopped the city from carrying on its business. For that moment, African American politicians were coming into office from two different directions. One group's base was the white power structure. They entered the black community from that direction and represented that interest. Another group of African American politicians arose from the black community to confront that power structure.This group, which won many important offices, represented "Black power." Perhaps former big city mayor of Detroit, Coleman Young and former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson - rather than Andrew Young, is the best example of the latter. It is clear that such outstanding persons as Colin Powell or Condolezza Rice do not represent the African American community, nor do they symbolize "Black power." These persons are called outstanding in recognition of the logic of all party politics and the perseverance needed to endure and is not an endorsement of their ideas, ideology or sectarian program. It should be clear the Ms. Rice represents an entirely different path to power politics than a Coleman Young and expresses a different juncture in our history. Profound economic and political changes consolidated America's economic, political and military position as the world's sole super power. For this superpower's government, racial discrimination became a profitless, politically embarrassing anachronism. Business organizations such as Denny's restaurants learned by paying out millions of dollars that the government would not defend nor tolerate blatant racial discrimination where they were involved. The Clinton administration illustrates these complex changes and their effects on African Americans. No one can say Bill Clinton is a racist by any stretch of the imagination, and he remains immensely popular amongst the African Americans. Yet, he did more to damage the economic and social stability of the African American masses than did most of his blatantly racist predecessors. In order to stabilize the declining profits of the rich, he was forced to transfer money from the poor in the form of the welfare "reform" bill. The African American masses are not simply Black, they are poor. Clinton showed that poverty is a class rather than a color question. And what of the Black representatives? Why wasn't there a greater outcry from the African Americans as the welfare bill went through the House and Senate? The African American intellectual elite, the traditional spokespersons for the community, was well on the road of integration into the ruling class or at least secure in the military, governmental or business bureaucracy that served the ruling class. They had no reason to oppose such legislation, or speak out against the invasion of Iraq and the fascist Patriotic Act. It gets worse. The so-called revolutionary movements were too often led by highly paid professors and members of the elite who knew which side of the bread the butter was on. They drove their Mercedes down to the "ghetto" on special occasions and continue to demand and rightfully fight to preserve various "black projects" in higher education, but have no reasons to mobilize the poor, who have no Mercedes and are increasingly excluded from public school, much less higher education. If an African American will think, talk - especially talk, act and have the same motivations as member of the ruling class, the doors are opening to them. The scores of black generals, admirals and CEO’s of big corporations, not just Oprah, the black politicians and governmental bureaucrats all testify to this. Below them a growing layer of black professional have practically no connection to the striving and aspirations of the vast masses of African Americans and this same logic must occur amongst all the nationality groups, be it the Mexican immigrants or Indian nations. This logic of imperialism’s evolution cannot be blocked only broken. As the black elite - the talented tenths, deserted the masses their could be no effective resistance. What we are experiencing and dealing with is a specific process, applicable to India, the various reactionary secessionists movements in the former Soviet Union, and everywhere else capital holds sway. Our history is instructive. The expressed spontaneous drive of the African American people, as a people has always been to achieve economic and political equality and benefit from and face the same social and political rights granted to the whites. Sure, there has been horribly bitter struggle over how to achieve freedom, be it through integration or separatism, but very little disagreement about ending lynch rope terror, kangaroo courts and the system of segregation. The direction of the fight was always to enter the system as equals, not overthrow it. These two different tendencies are not going to just go away. The African Americans' common struggle against segrega tion and inequality has been the central force in their cohesiveness as a people. This creates a contradiction. Every victory against racial oppression weakens this cohesion. They can protect themselves and move forward so long as they are united as a people. Conversely, they cannot consolidate their victories as a people, only as members of different classes and class segments with distinct economic interest. Defeat of segregation meant the African Americans would individually enter their respective classes. Necessarily, each social class would benefit unequally from desegregation. There would then be greater economic and ultimately social inequality between the African Americans of different classes than between the individual black and white within the respective class. This is unavoidable since the rest of the people of the United States are unequal. The African Americans can only take advantage of their victories as individuals becoming more equal to their white counterparts in a fundamentally unequal society. A good example of this is desegregation in the Army. The black private soldier is much more equal to the white private than to his black company commander. Today a new voice and perspective is needed. The voice and vision of a different class segment has to be fought for. The issue of the African American people as a people and their continuous dispersal throughout the country requires a balanced view. The African American people as a people began formation under slavery and further evolved, as a people, in the main, totally separated from whites, in the context of roughly 90 years of segregation. What held them together as a people was Jim Crow and the historic violence melted out to them by the whites. This history cannot be undone, only corrected. The African American people in 2007 are somewhat different than the African American people of the 1930s. In fact marked differences exist. It is difficult to look at our society today and grasp the degree of segregation and violence faced by the African American in 1930. Further, our vast communications infrastructure has brought what was once the specific national character of the African American into the homes of everyone and further evolved the language and music once more than less exclusive to African Americans into something peculiar to all of America. Spike TV had an award show last week to determine "Whose the Baddest MoFo" - or mutherfucker, and something like this was of course inconceivable 75 years ago. I am not making this up. For the uniformed "MoFo" or mutherfucker, as it is used by African American has absolutely nothing to do with sex or ones mother, but is an adjective in American English to amplify and exaggerate whatever is being talked about. In 1930 the popular image of the black was a ragged bum with a shoeshine box, happily singing and dancing down the street, with very little money, but still happy. You ain’t got no money and battered clothes, but somehow a mutherfucker is still happy. On the other extreme was the sex staved superhuman looking to rape white women given his primitive intellectual capacity. These images were reinforced in literature and cinema within the context of the isolation of Jim Crow segregation and justified stabilized American society. Further, back then, the vast majority of blacks were within the South with roughly five million of them sharecroppers, securely outside urban life. This is not the case today. What has changed that was fundamental was the mechanization of agriculture and sooner or later those things depending upon the old system of agriculture had to change including the Southern political structures. Then came the revolution in technology and increased rationalization of production, dumping millions into poverty and making a handful billionaires in the blink of an eye.
************************************** See what's free at http://www.aol.com. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
