>>> Wojtek Sokolowski writes:
Perhaps I'm missing something, but I just fail to see how exactly
nationalism, Black or otherwise, will "lift itself by its bootstraps" to
universalism and internationalism. >>>
and
I reply (WS): I do not feel personally offended in any way by such exclusions, just as I am not offended by the existence of any other exclusive club. I view it as an opportunity to discuss the organizing strategy for the left, not to register personal grievances.>>>
Charles replies: Yes, comrade, I think you are missing a proletarian internationalist theory of self-determination of oppressed nations and nationalities. Sort of elementary stuff, kind of Leninist affirmative action, recognition of the difference and even opposition between great power chauvinism and oppressed nation unification, self-determination, and self-liberation. You are treating an asymetry symetrically. This is an error of the same type as the U.S. Supreme Court "reverse discrimination" doctrine which underlies the outlawing of affirmative action in the name of equality. Oh pernicious denial of racism. In other words, your criticism/self-criticism is sadly lacking .
I think you are treating "exclusive clubs" originating in the all around racist social segregation imposed on Blacks by whites in America as identicial with the necessary moments of Underground Railroad tradition liberation clubs formed by Blacks in freeing themselves from that racist oppression.
Actually, some facts related to this thread are confused, as I can tell you from direct "empirical" experience that the BRC was not exclusive of whites, but let us assume some exclusive radical political meeting of Blacks, Browns, Yellows, Reds, Blueblacks Women, Lesbians et.al somewhere on Earth in 1998. The vast majoity of white radicals who I have worked with in political struggles learned, accept, get along with the need for such long ago. I think of the comradely relationship between the National Lawyers Guild and the National Conference of Black Lawyers, for example.
The U.S. Left has already been through this issue in the 60's and 70's. Interestingly, the 60's /70's Black Radical tradition (which has heavy threads of proletarian internationalism in for example the Black Panthers, and Kathleen Cleaver and other Panthers were at the BRC, Angela Davis, Charlene Mitchell and the C of C/CPUSA, Nelson Peary, General Baker, Marion Kramer and the new organization of the CLP, et al) is so far ahead of some on this thread that it does not need total exclusion of whites from the BRC public meeting. The dialogues of the preconference period are open to the world on the internet. This does not mean that there is not still a level of internal , self-united discussion, a "moment" in this dialectic.
Charles Brown