>All the evidence we've seen on this list suggests that the decision to
>admit people who aren't black was made at the last minute.
Evidence? What evidence? All I've seen is allegations, arguments, inferences, and assumptions.
> Here in
>Knoxville, the advance word was that it was for black people only. It's
>very likely that some other radicals stayed home just for this reason. So
>in fact they were excluded.
Tom,
You still don't get it. There is a difference between not being encouraged (invited) to attend and being excluded. Actually, compared to other interest group "caucuses" (like women's caucuses), it was generous of them not to exclude whites. Why is that so threatening? Consider all of the reasons by African Americans would want to be able to sit down together, to debate one another, to analyze and strategize without have to (a) deal with the interventions of well-intended but presumptuous white radicals, (b) without having to measure their words in order to cater to the political and psychological hangups of whites, and (c) in order to work through issues that are internal to their relations with one another uncomplicated by the need to simultaneously negotiate their relations with whites? Give the track record of the white left in fighting chauvinism and racial insensitivity within the Left, why are you and others so offended?
>> For white leftists (or non-leftists, for that matter) to
>> question the "correctness" of their doing so is an expression of exactly the
>> kind of insensitivity that caused them to call for a gathering for, by, and
>> of Blacks (but not excluding those who are not).
>
>So now staying away from congresses isn't enough, non-black people have to
>refrain from talking about them as well. I've never worked on a dock, is
>it OK if I question the correctness of MUA's settlement? I happen to think
>that the strategy and tactics adopted by other workers is a matter of
>concern to me. If BRC raises the prominence of explicit anti-capitalism in
>black people's struggles in the US, that will benefit all of us. If it
>deflects radicals into supporting a bouregoises that they perceive to be
>their own because of nationalism, as Rakesh seems to suggest it might,
>that's bad. No?
>
>Tom
I have not heard any word from the BRC or its organizers that said whites shall not be permitted to discuss issues of concern to African Americans. Indeed, whites have been pontificating on what Blacks should or should not do for centuries. The problem is not that whites have been muzzled. You can talk about, debate, write, or ponder any issue you like. The fact that the struggles, strategies and tactics of a group may affect you does not automatically give you license to demand a right to be present whenever they decide to meet. You can question the correctness of the MUA settlement, but that does not mean you have a right to go to the union meeting at which MUA members are going to debate that settlement to lecture them on what they should or should not do. Indeed, most unions would exclude all non-members from such deliberations. You seem to be saying you don't trust African American radicals to be able to meet and come to their own judgments and political conclusions about how best to conduct their own and the class struggle without you and other white radicals being present to advise and correct them when they wander from the "correct" path. If that is what you are suggesting (as I interpret your last sentence), it is patronizing, insensitive, and condescending -- precisely the kind of interaction from white Leftists that one might conclude motivates a desire to be able to meet without having to debate them at the same time.
Nothing stopped you from going to Chicago. You could have brought your own tract on what the Black Liberation Movement ought to do now and distributed it to everyone entering the meeting place. You could have sought admission and if refused, picketed, protested, leafleted, or whatever. I don't know who gave you "the advance word," but you might have even contacted the preparatory committee that was handling registrations to determine whether in fact whites were going to be excluded.
If you continue to be upset about what you believe to have been "exclusion," why not contact Blacks from your area who did attend and invite them to a meeting of any group you might belong to to discuss their experience and to express your concerns to them directly. Or watch for notice of a report-back session they organize and attend to raise your concerns publicly in their presence to see what their response is. I don't know you, and don't want to leap to presumptuous conclusions, but I suspect that few of the critics who have expressed your point of view on this list regularly interact with African Americans in situations in which THEY themselves are the minority rather than Blacks. It would be instructive to do so.
In solidarity, Michael E.