rc-am wrote:
> justin wrote:
>
> > [SNIP]through the 1940s, the CPUSA was
> almost
> > the only political force not rooted in the Black community to put
> antiracism
> > front and center, and Hoover was quite right that even the civil rights
> > movement of the 50s and 60s have a Commie coloration in its white
> components.
>
> and where does the communist movement come from? another planet?
The historical question here is not where communism in the abstract comes from but where the anti-racism of the CPUSA at a particular time came from -- and it might as well have come from another planet, being pretty much imposed on the CPUSA by the Comintern.
I don't know precisely what (if anything) this means for us now, but it is part of u.s. working-class history that ought to be recognized by those studying that history. J. Edgar Hoover is not a very good source of u.s. cultural history, but perhaps it is worth something to note that he once said that you could tell a communist because they were the only people comfortable around Negroes. It could lead in both directions. The process of becoming comfortable around blacks could for some whites be also a process of first becomining comfortable around communists and then becoming communists.
Carrol