-----Original Message----- From: Carrol Cox <cbcox at mail.ilstu.edu> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>If there is any "established orthodoxy" on the u.s. left, rakesh is the
>one expressing it. As earlier debates, going back two or three years, on
>these lists showed, the position being held (variously: we don't
>completely agree at all) by Ken, Lou, and me is definitely a minority
>position.
Well, and I say that with comradely love in my heart, you all really are old farts then :) since Rakesh's position on almost everything is nowhere near the majority position for the GenX and younger generation of which we both are part. How old are you Angela? This might be an age cognitive dissonance coming out on the list.
If we define "the left" as people involved actively in social change, radical integration a la Rakesh is exotic and loses out to the majority range of nationalist, postmodern and multicultural strains that see integration as a fools errand that fails to deal with the routinized racism of the United States. And I would place myself closer to the majority in the multicultural wing, but I also respect Rakesh's articulation of an alternative to the majority left view of nationalism of various stripes. Even if we restrict the left to explicitly (largely white) Marxist organizations, all now have routinized black, latino and/or asian caucuses accorded autonomy.
The reality is that most social change organizations are currently race-based in their structure and organizing. You have multiple groups doing similar and parallel organizing in different racial communities on exactly the "soft nationalist" principles that Louis attributes to Malcolm.
To take California as an example, the strongest student activist groups are MEChA and the Asian Pacific Student Union, although their singular strength has diminished as subgroup organizing has increased for different latino and asian subgroups. In the community, groups like the Asian Immigrant Womens Association and PODER (a largely latino environmental justice group) are the lead organizations for empowerment in many fights. The Center for Third World Organizing is one focus for tying many of these groups together and most of these groups enthusiastically work with supportive whites, but the nationalist and multicultural positions implied in group names are embodied in the methodology of activism.
I think the left in California (as elsewhere) would be strengthened by stronger cross-racial group organizational links and a heavier emphasis on economic/class issues, although it would be a mistake to overemphasize those failings, since there was enthusiastic participation by the vast range of these groups in fighting the anti-union Prop 226 this past Spring and there are multiple links between all these groups - the biggest problem being a certain amount of waste in the number of links and the "reinventing the wheel" problem of continual coalition-building.
Carroll, Lou and Ken may be living in a different Left from the one I have been part of for the last decade, but the issues that have defined the center of left organizing has been issues like the Gulf War (defined strongly by its racist nature), education funding with a strong focus on racial disparity, prison and police brutality issues, immigrant rights, affirmative action, and welfare (with all its racial implications). Union fights have regained some of their vogue among left activists largely as those unions have internalized multicultural ideology and given fights like Justice for Janitors a strong racial ideological component.
Where Rakesh may be in the ideological vanguard (and not I would note in a "throwback" position because he has himself been steeped in the muliticultural majority in the past) is the frustration of many activists in the numbing repetition of defensive fights in recent years. For such fights of community self-defense, the lessons of Malcolm in the strength of controlling the agenda in one's own community have been demonstrated an d justified with a whole range of successes.
But their is a limit to such an approach in creating offensive strategies that can really fight for power, especially across a state as large and varied as California or at national levels. There has been a lot of ideological ferment in favor of moving beyond defense to taking offensive action. New organizations like Californians for Justice (tied closely to the Center for Third World Organizing) and other coalitions are talking more often about integrated strategic fights that go beyond the temporary coalitions of the past.
Rakesh may go farther ideologically in his rejection of separatism than most of today's activists, but he may be ahead of a new wave of radical integrationist ideology that may get greater play in serving the strategic desire of many activists to unite struggles.
And it may not be surprising that this new wave of integrationist belief will come out of California, where whites will soon be in the majority. Since integration will not mean whites have a majority of those in the room, different people and groups will be able to engage in dialogue and struggle together on more of an even footing.
One reason why I am more favorable towards the Black Radical Congress than Rakesh is that I generally believe that the more success of racial communities in organizing intrnally, the more free those groups feel to engage in any multiracial struggle, since they don't feel they will lose their own internal sense of purpose and needs under the dominance of other groups - especially of whites involved.
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So much for strategy, now on rhetorical style:
Now, while I take very seriously the nationalist arguments of fellow activists of color, I agree with Angela that those same arguments used by whites are generally of a "blacker than thou" polemic that, as we have seen here, descends into a level of personal insult that NO person of color has ever used against me in all the time I have been involved in anti-racism work.
I've commented on how offensive were Louis's comments such as "Rakesh knows nothing about black people" (and if Louis actually knew anything about Rakesh's life, he'd shut up and be embarassed for a few years), but Carroll jumped the polemics to a whole new level of obscenity when he said:
"Rakesh, black in complexion is politically white"
WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU AS A WHITE PERSON TO DEFINE SOMEONE'S ELSE'S ETHNICITY?
Okay, Doug, please kick me for violating my own standards of civility, but having a discussion of racism where a bunch of white people tells an activist of color that he is some kind of oreo race-traitor makes my skin crawl. Rakesh has engaged in heroic civility throughout this abuse but this has got to end.
--Nathan Newman