The NOI would not defend integration fighters because it did not believe in integration. The meeting with the Klan had nothing to do with the civil rights movement. NOTHING. The NOI had ZERO interest in freedom righters, bus boycotts, lunch counters and all that. The notion that the Klan offered them a tit-for-tat deal to back off from defending SNCC is just a falsification of history. You should shoot for higher standards than this.
>
>Now we agree that Malcolm X's criticism of the NOI does not undermine all
>black nationalism--though Malcolm X himself could no longer describe
>himself as a black nationalist after the break with the NOI
Malcolm X could not describe himself as a black nationalist after the break with the NOI? What was the Organization of Afro-American Unity, if it is not black nationalist? Integrationist? Marxist? I don't think so.
>I think it is arbitary for you to put those several struggles from the 70s
>under the rubric of black nationalism. At least it makes it impossible to
>determine what you mean by the black nationalism you are defending.
The Attica revolt was led by NOI prisoners who refused to eat pork and who described themselves as black nationalists to the press. Check Tom Wicker's book. The Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and other such formations at GM and Ford were black-only. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers grew out of this struggle. If these are not nationalist formations, then I don't know what are. The Cornell students fought for a black studies department and were advised by James Hare, who chaired the 3rd International Conference on Black Power at Philadelphia in 1968. He said, "black studies is based ideally on the ideology of revolutionary nationalism."
>BRC will drain blacks away from such organizations to the detriment of the
>radical development of us all, and I consider this a frightful consequence
>of the kind of black separatism that the Million Man March has made
>respectable. I raise the concern openly with every hope of encouraging the
>thoughtful conter criticism you offer in your last post.
Manning Marable said that the large turnout at the Million Man March was the main inspiration to form the BRC.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)