<< 5. Malcolm X's hatred of the Jew inspired white integrationist seems to
have never been reversed. He can't admit the existence of white American
anti racism (or ever express genuine comradeship with those whites who
struggled to end apartheid; those whites who were also often reds were
summarily dismissed by Stokely in the name of black power, though that
purge was thus anti red in effect). >>
This continues to worsen, and to try any reasonable scholar's patience. Have you never read Malcolm's encouragement of whites to emulate John Brown? Yet you dare criticize Louis's method of citation. For shame! As for Kwame Ture's AAPRP, the issue of apartheid was precisely the one where they sought white involvement publicly, and in many areas of work his cadres met with us to coordinate efforts. The late Howard Spencer, a SNCC veteran and Stokely's chief representative in Jackson, founder and director of the Black and Proud Liberation School, was one of my most trusted comrades. He used to invite me as a speaker to teach the children that they should not hate all whites just because of Mississippi's ever-present white supremacy. Every white socialist and communist in Jackson was invited to attend the annual African Liberation Day celebration, even those who were publicly anti-nationalist. (Also invited were all the integrationist leaders, and rival Black nationalists.) Rakesh again has created entirely fictional nationalists to justify his outrageous position.
With respect to Angela's post, it seems perverse that she takes pride in knowing nothing of the personnel nor the practice of the U.S. left, declares herself uninterested in those topics, but then declares that ignorance a virtue in debate. If she cannot trifle with a bit of reading, I certainly don't have time to post several books for her benefit. Suffice it to say that nearly every assertion and accusation in her rant are false. My wonder is why she has any interest at all in this list.
Carrol mistook my endorsement of Ted Allen's writing for more perfect agreement than exists. (Ted has always been lukewarm about Black nationalism, for example.) Even in the old days, I had strong disagreements with Ted, but his article on the invention of the white race, though it omits important complications, is the best brief introduction to that subject, and his "Can White Radicals be Radicalized?" is a fine antidote to orthodoxy. If Angela would study just these two texts, she would never again be able to say that no one had presented a comprehensive program for combating racism.
And when I get around to discussing Gene Genovese, she should just change channels if it doesn't interest her.
[Carrol's note reminded me that my personal sectarian Marxist history is 40 years old. I first knew both Noel Ignatin and Ted Allen in 1959 as members of the POC, the Provisional Organizing Committee to Reconstitute a Marxist- Leninist Communist Party in the United States, shortly after they had been booted out of the CPUSA, premature anti-revisionists, as it were. It was a long road from those politics to the White Blindspot, but all of us learned a lot from that experience. Noel and Ted hated it, I still have some fond memories, not of the Stalinist politics but of the truly proletarian, multiracial/multinational, dedicated revolutionary membership, a rare occurrence in the 1950s USA.]
Ken Lawrence