Scabs?

Charles Brown charlesb at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Thu May 28 07:45:09 PDT 1998


Maria,

I'd answer your question this way: it is not so much a matter of judging workers for purposes of establishing guilt, morally or legally, but that by continuing to hold these prejudices, the workers who hold them are perpetuating their OWN and the others' oppression and exploitation. The members of the bourgeoisie are constantly manipulating and regenerating these prejudices members of the working class in a classic divide and rule strategy. Think of Marx and Engels' number 1 advice to the working class of the world very generally -workers of the world unite. All workers of all types unite with workers of other types. We are not counting demerits to be added up on Judgement Day. We are trying to get it together for a better here and now for everybody. It is not bashing, it is criticism /self-criticism internal to the class. You know: how are we going to get together and beat the bosses of some of you fellow workers put on KKK hoodedsheets in the autoplant, and the rest of you white workers don't jump them and stop it. As long as you do that, "males of European lineage", you and we will remain without power.

As Benjamin Franklin said, if we don't all hang together, we will all hang separately.

Charles Brown


>>> Maria Gilmore <Maria.Gilmore at gte.net> 05/26 8:18 AM >>>
My only additional observations to Carroll and Yoshie are, where do you get the idea that males of European lineage who are without power are the main, indeed the only agents of all these terrible things? Or that they're somehow as a group more guilty than others? The really tough thing about confronting this society is, so many people, all colors, sexes, and socio-economic status, are racist, sexist, homophobic...and class-conscious! Some of the most sexist people I've ever known have been women; some of the most racist, people of color; some of the most ignorant, academics; I have even known homophobic gays, in the sense that they choose not to be a part of a "gay community"; as one guy I worked with once put it, "I don't like to associate with other gay people."

So I think it's counterproductive, if not downright vindictive, to bash one segment of our culture as being worse than another. It's, well, unjust, now isn't it?



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