Doug wrote: "Nonblacks then are consigned to the right? As Jordan commented offlist, how radical."
Doyle
I think Doug makes a good remark. For instance X writes:
"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...."
Doyle
X uses their personal anecdotal opinion about whites to stereotype whites as impervious to persuasion, or whatever benign (as opposed to the image of the cp using force to change people) means at the disposal of the left. Doug merely asserts that what are whites if they can't be a part of the brc, the "right"? Such positions as X posits are in effect advocating apartheid politics. This position depends upon the unchallengeable, the undebatable position that whites will not do anything until the system changes.
Doyle People change back and forth all the time (that seems to me to be a safe assumption about human beings in a Marxist mode of thought). People make mistakes which we as thinking beings can analyze and learn from. All the various divisions of human beings can commit errors. Is there really a scientific reason to call people with a skin color difference a seperate race or is racial differences really simply another social construct just like language? Can one explain why people adhere to a position strongly I mean explain for instance why human beings have a strong influence upon their thought from their native language. Why can't people move freely back and forth between languages. That is what is being raised about ending racism in whites. How do people move from a social formation created in the US by capitalism to something else which is democratic, and equality based? The sticky word is equality based. People need to move into something their lives weren't structured to live. However, people move into new conditions all the time. Three generations of language learning later, immigrant families are native (meaning 'born to') to the language structure of the geo-center of their lives.
Doyle It is not clear from anyone's statements that the proposition of excluding "whites" from a meeting satisfies the condition to end racism of the white majority. It is as if the domination that we suffer in the system "magically" goes away by promoting divisive organizing of the people who need some truly mass tool to get a better life. There is no concept in this about where and when the groups will find a means to over come the barrier. It simply says barriers are the best and only means to solve the problems of barriers. There is a statement to the effect that all the divided peoples under this concept:
X "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."
Doyle White centered or capitalist centered? Which is the dominant form of oppression, racism, or sexism, or more broadly capitalism? What does the role of economic "dominance" have in creating racist divisions amongst workers. Suppose white workers really honestly opened their arms and tried to reach out to black workers, what do you think might happen. I think over time both sides would embrace each other. As long as the domination through divisions was removed, that is capitalism is dealt with. As long as the goal was to get rid of class divisions. It is usual to refer to such goals as Utopian. But people do organize around ending class, ending capitalism despite the often difficult trials that must be endured. Doyle Saylor