Malcolm X and building a Black Tammany Hall

[Liza Featherstone]

It's also way of signifying that one is a progressive -- a sensitive person who 
values good stuff like communities -- without saying anything meaningful. In 
fact actually saying something meaningless, since of course, while there it makes 
sense to talk about  black, gay, or library science "communities" plural it's silly 
to talk about any of those large and diverse groups as a monolithic "community" 

Doug Henwood wrote:
> 
> Charles Brown wrote:
> >Maybe use of "people" ,
> >or "oppressed national or
> >racial group" instead of
> >"community" will clarify this for
> >you. But these are "technical"
> >terms, like "exploitation" , so
> >it is good to have popular
> >terms in that we want to
> >speak to millions. "Community"
> >is a popular term for these.
> >
> >What are the specifics of your
> >Marxist analysis of this contra
> >above ? What are the specifics
> >of your claim that these phrases
> >obscure more than reveal , etc. ?
> >I am not familiar with the
> >critique of the concept of
> >"community".
> 
> I suspect that this whole linguistic fashion of naming a ____ community
> came from the American habit of euphemism - people who found monosyllables
> like "blacks" and "Jews" too harsh thought that "the black community" and
> "the Jewish community" was more euphonious and less potentially offensive.
> 
> The reason I object to the formulation is that, as I said the first time
> around, "community" is a word that creates an artificial unity, something
> more organicist than conflictual. I'd have thought that it's a word that
> Amatai Etzioni would throw around, not a Marxist like yourself, who'd be
> inclined to see stratification and conflict where others might see a whole.
> And, as the man said, the whole is the false.
> 
> Doug