>>> "K" <d-m-c at worldnet.att.net> 11/16 2:59 PM >>>
BTW, Charles, solidarity in mourning over Stokely Carmichael. I used to love the passion in his writing.
By focusing solely on identity issues, it seems to me all a bit of cultural or identity politics. ________
Charles: In what sense do you mean that I focus solely on identity issues ? I am not an identity theorist. My approach is historical materialist. My theory of the individual is a theory of the subject. _____________
While surely cultural./identity politics have their place at times, it is also quite clear that in academic settings any attempt to understand the structural sources of oppression and, yes, the evolution of Black culture. I don't think you mean to do this, no. ________
Charles: I don't quite follow you here.
I am not in an academic setting. I am in the real world struggle. ______________
But in the hands of some of my colleagues it is entirely too superficial for me. You know, throw a little Black culture in her, a little Black history in there, mix and stir with unexamined everything else and--voila--you send students out in the world who think they've done their duty to racial oppression because they've read Tricia Rose's analysis of the resistant discourses of rap music. But than nothin' I 'spose. _________
Charles: Academic teaching and theorizing must play a role in what I am describing, but there must be a unity of theory and practice, practical-critical activity in the real world.
>I would say anybody who calls me
>dangerous I kind of consider a right winger
>per se.
Yes that's right Charles I'm a crazy rightwinger. Yes, yes indeedy I am. I always just love being lumped in with the right if I criticize something. Like Carrol telling me that I'm a privatized idiote and yet Carrol hasn't read enough of me to know what he's talking about. __________
Charles: Except that you said what I said is dangerous. Why would a Lefty do that ? I
_______________
Exoticizing the Other--I'm thinking of bell hooks here (among others) ___________
Charles: I have read and studied bel hooks some. I had some exchanges with her on the telephone. I agree with her a lot, especially on the unity of Black liberation and feminism.
However, I don't go along with her religiosity.
She didn't say to me what you did.
The exoticizing the Other paradigm is alright, but given that I am an Other, it gets a little tricky to try to critique what I say as if I were a Same. :>) But seriously up to a certain point I think the Self-Other paradigm has use, but my analysis is not short of its valid aspects.
__________
As for the rest, really, see me as a right winger if you'd like. It is surely very likely that whatever I am or say I am won't matter one wit. _________
Charles: The part that you said that matters one wit is that what I said was dangerous. That raises a serious suspicion in my mind as to how you could reach such a conclusion, when what I said was not dangerous.
In any event, thank you very much, but I do have a quite healthy, rich, lively understanding of Black Culture and History as that's what I studied as an undergrad. _______
Charles: If you are white, then you are a good candidate to try becoming Black as I suggested. _________
Why? Because it spoke to me in a way that nothing else did. I could relate to it, you see. Oh, of course, I could know much much more and I try. But, as I said in another post, I also want upper middle class whites to, as they say, unpack their knapsacks of privilege and see exactly how they inscribe and reinscribe their class/race privilege everydamnminuteoftheday. __________
Charles: I'm down with that part of you and bel hooks approach. I am a little more focussed on the working classes, as I am a Marxist-Leninist.
____________________
I am the safest person I know.
>
>My position are all proletarian internationalist
>and in solidarity with the national liberation
>and freedom movements and interests of
>all the groups you list above. To call what
>I am saying dangerous is so opposite the truth
>that I wonder what's up with you.
Well I did not know. You mentioned nothing of other cultures, only Black culture. No need to get worried about psychological states or repressed fears or anything. Really, honestly. I am much more afraid of upper middle class white guys who run things than I am of the kids next door.
_________________
Charles: I'm not afraid of the kids next door at all. Black is beautifu and most people in Detroit are Black. It feels good.
Something is wrong with your theory that you would jump to the conclusion that a pro-Black position has any conflict with a pro-Mexican/Chicana, pro-world wide national liberation perspective against especially Gringoism.
Viva Zapata , Pancho Villa, and Fidel too. Ho, Ho, Ho Che Minh. We love La Pasinaria Long Live the Hawaiian liberation movement, and the Fijian and the Filipina. Or the indigenous North American.
As a matter a fact, my grandfather told me I am at least one/sixteenth Indian.
Charles Brown
Workers and Oppressed
Peoples of the World, Unite.
>
>
Charles wrote:
>Something is wrong with your theory that
>you would jump to the conclusion that
>a pro-Black position has any conflict
>with a pro-Mexican/Chicana, pro-world
>wide national liberation perspective
>against especially Gringoism.
Firstly, you keep throwing out the bait and I'm not biting. That is, I'm not particularly interested in a game of I've got a bigger hard on for Marx than you. Smile Charles.
As for the quoted from you above: Well Charles, why would I know? I'd think that you might want to clarify things a bit. Saying only that whites ought to become Black is to turn the whole issue into a Black/white issue, as if there is nothing else. Should Mexicanos become Black? How about Chinese? Chinese folks can be pretty racist at times, no?
BTW, I've lost the originals, was it you that said DuBois reminded us that Blacks have two souls. Wasn't it that they had one but it was divided against itself. HE was drawing on his Hegelian/Germanic phd training, no?
Accusing me being unfairly presumption by assuming that you were speaking only of Black Culture and History and not of the Culture and History of any other ethnic group/nationality, when in fact you did not speak of anything else but Black Culture and History is ummm weird.
I don't know what your problem with the word dangerous is. Perhaps you're investing it with some meaning that I'm unaware of. Yeah, I think if academics sit around teaching about Black Culture and History in superficial ways, that's different and much more dangerous than what you're advocating. I believe I said that already. Theirs is white guilt. Thheirs is lip service. That's dangerous. Pretending as if it doesn't exist can be a problem. No you aren't dangerous, but I don't think you won't disagree that the mix and stir approach--multiculturalism--is dangerous: it lets people think they've accomplished something when they haven't accomplished a thing.
>As a matter a fact, my grandfather
>told me I am at least one/sixteenth
>Indian.
But what has this to do with anything? Why is this important?
SnitgrrRl