The core defect in Rakesh's posts is their utter irrelevance to anything. He writes as though the existence of black nationalism was a topic of debate when it is a simple fact, and nothing he or I or Lou or Doug or anyone else on this list can say will make the slightest difference.
For example, Rakesh wrote: "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..."
O.K. Say this is true. So what! That's the way it is and that's the way it is going to be. The question of whether there should or shouldn't be black nationalist movements is simply bizarre, like arguing whether or not the rockies should be taller or shorter than the ozarks. Anyone who argues the latter question is rather innocent of geology; anyone who argues the former question is rather innocent of capitalist reality and U.S. history.
The question for marxists (white or black or whatever) is not whether to support or oppose the existence of black nationalism but how we are going to build a political practice in the United States which will elicit the progressive possibilities rather than the reactionary possibilities of black nationalism. U.S. history created and creates and recreates the black nation as a social fact -- a fact which the BRC are struggling to deal with. Rakesh's endless complaints in cyberspace are mere static.
I think Lou should stop replying to those posts, and turn his attention to thinking out ways in which white leftists (under present conditions, when "the left," white or non-white, does not exist) and those many black leftists who operate both within and without the black "community" can work to build a left which can exist with the reality of black nationalism.
Carrol
Carrol