> From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
> >Nonblacks then are consigned to the right? As Jordan commented offlist,
> >how radical.
>
> Doug, which left organization do you belong to? If none, then you (like
> many leftists) are not part of "the left" but of the multiplicity of lefts
> and cultural formations. Unfortunately, even if you belong to some left
> organization, you are still part of the multiplicity of lefts who share no
> strategic organizational infrastructure
[SNIP]
> Those in the Black Radical Congress are anything but racially exclusive.
> Here is what they say themselves about purely "black radicalism":
>
> "At the same time we recognize that Black people don't have a monopoly on
> oppression. The BRC sees the struggle for peace with justice, at the same
> time we embrace the militant slogan - 'no justice, no peace,' as a global
> struggle. We are not narrow and exclusive in our political vision. Even
> the term 'Black people' encompasses a rich, diverse and international
> community spanning from Africa to the Caribbean to Latin America. More
> fundamentally, we understand we cannot assess our enemies or allies by
> skin color. We recognize the struggles of Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Native
> and Asian Americans and poor whites as parallel to our own. We understand
> the importance of struggling on multiple fronts simultaneously. The BRC is
> one such front. We invite support and solidarity from our
> sisters,brothers, and comrades around the globe."
I hope everyone on this list knows the history of white workers and the white left (including too many marxists) in respect to Black workers. That history, *up to the very present*, has been only in scattered instances other than racist, usually aggressively racist. There is no empirical evidence, there are no historical principles, that give any reason whatever that this structure and attitude will change through education, persuasion, propaganda, appeals to unity, appeals to humanity or even simple personal decency. I have lived in close quarters for 68 years with whites from all sectors and strata of the working class, and I have never known *one* to change on the basis of persuasion. Nor have I ever read or heard *any* serious proposal to change this institutional racism within the white working class. (Personal feelings of racism are irrelevant; the overwhelming majority of those white workers whose allegiance to the left will eventually be required live within a structure that perpetually reproduces racism in daily life. That structure must be changed before appeals to individuals can have any significant, or even insignificant, impact.
Thus any organizing effort which *begins* with a multi-racial appeal will in the future be as it has been in the present and is now: essentially white. This is a fact. (I am going to assume that anyone reading this post has read Philip Foner's history of American labor: he provides *all* the exceptions to this rule, and in each case examining the exception shows that it also took place under radically exceptional conditions.) The CPUSA probably has the best record (and the best was not good enough) of any U.S. left group on race, and at least from what I know, it only achieved that advance by being forced, kicking and screaming all the way, by directions from the Comintern. Those who believe that left organizations ought not to follow the "Marxist-Leninist" model of the Comintern have a heavy obligation to show that there is any other way to break through the racism which provides the form, the mode of being, of U.S. capitalist history.
It is nevertheless actually easy to see the impact on that institutionalzied racism (not only in the nation as a whole but in the working-class and the white left) which a movement which was *centrally* black led and black dominated. I cannot imagine a white leadership or a predominantly white organization issuing a call for a conference which would attract any significant number of Black people (or people of color in general). The *only* way to arrive at a movement not white-centered is by beginning with a movement that is black centered. Any other perspective is sheer utopianism -- white-centered utopianism.
Carrol
P.S. Bill Fletcher, speaking at last fall's Radical Scholars and Activists Conference in Chicago, laid out in some detail, with historical data to exemplify his point, the potential for reaching whites by starting with Blacks only. I do not have a copy of his speech, and my memory of it is insufficient to provide any detailed account of his argument.