1. CLR James' defense of separate, but not separatist, black politics was elaborated in certain historical conditions, i.e., an apartheid America. Does his defense hold in the present conditions? For the CLR Jamesians it's surprisingly undialectical to take James' formulations from the 1940s and apply them to contemporary America.
2. Possible changes that may make separate radical black politics antiquated.
a. latinos are now not only the biggest minority but also the group with the greatest percentage of its people suffering poverty. Of course latinos are often black as well. Interesting finding by Urcioli Exposing Prejudice is that poorer Puerto Ricans will identify themselves as black even if they are the same skin as better off ones who only claim to be Latino. Class and race are indeed intertwined categories. Yet in most major cities we find blacks and latinos (and asian americans too), both exposed to racism and both harboring prejudices towards each other. Won't a black exclusive strategy accentuate tensions and divisions and stymie the process of learning how to work together and finding new bases for cooperative action? I would prefer that we learn how to walk together under a red banner, rather than a red black and green one. Jesse Jackson no longer even thinks in terms of a rainbow of peoples but only of set asides for black businessmen. Have black leaders who suggest broader multi'racial' interests become suspect within the black community? Will blacks flee the BRC if it were to become more universalist? Is this why the racial exclusivism of Farakahn needs now be reproduced by all black organizations? These are the sorts of questions Carlos Munoz, Jr raised in the classes for which I ta'ed. And they seem reasonable questions to ask on the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr.
By the way, the Reaganite fascist opposition to national recognition of his birthday on the grounds that he was a pinko was probably the formative political experience in my life; it certainly wasn't Spike Lee's Malcolmania that led me to radical ideas. Reagan's opposition was the first time that I realized that there was something deeply, deeply wrong with this country. It also made me an anti racist communist.
b. the great paranoia, justified at the time of Keynesian pseudo prosperity, that blacks would be the only ones left out of the American dream has proven unjustified. All high school educated workers, regardless of 'race', are falling behind absolutely and relatively to the college educated. Wouldn't it be enabling for blacks to know that far from being an persecuted minority, they are *also* part of a broader oppressed class which is strong enough in numbers and by its position in society to actually change society at its fundamental bases? Can anyone be really serious about radical change if one is haunted by the thought that she is really only a member of a powerless persecuted minority, no matter how 'racially' unified that minority is?
c. police abuse and mob violence has never been exclusively visted upon blacks.
d. does black radicalism undertaken autonomously without the criss crossing support of the american proletariat as a whole threaten to expose blacks to repression they are not powerful enough alone to ward off? Isn't this at least in part what happened to the BPP?
e. will the BRC drain black members from the organisations that have supported it or, as Nathan suggests, will it draw more blacks to them by having radicalised them within the BRC?
I believe that the kinds of questions I am asking now would have been posed by Abram Harris and Oliver Cox--two thinkers certainly worthy of sustained attention. Harris' writings have been collected by William Darity Jr; a new volume of Cox's writings will be put out by Monthly Review, ed. by Adolph Reed,Jr. I am pretty sure however Darity and Reed would disagree with a great deal of what I have written.
yours, rakesh