left issues that are left too narrow --\ Was "What "Black Nationalism Debates" Do to Us"

[raphael allen]

At 11:06 AM 1/19/99 -0600,     Carrol wrote:
>
>
>Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> But given the long, embarrassing history of white people telling black
>> people what to do, and enumerating their shortcomings, I understand your
>> discomfort. On the third hand, it's impossible to discuss U.S. politics
>> without talking about "race," and it's hard to talk about "race" without
>> talking about black nationalism. And it'd be hard
>
>Actually, in practice, this embarassment is not all that hard to resolve. The
>difficulty has not come from whites talking about black nationalism -- the
>difficulty has come from whites claiming that blacks were wrong to talk about
>black nationalism. I think I want to stick to my original post to Lou, telling
>him that he should not respond to Rakesh because Rakesh's posts were of no
>relevance to anything.
>
>This whole thread has been but one more banal episode in that long embarassing
>history you speak of .
>
>Carrol

I mostly agree, and like how you put it... though I've found some 
moments valuable.

The parts i value most in this thread are the moments where 
list-members are addressing the huge pieces of racialism and 
race-neutral boundary-work which, intentional or not, explicit or 
not, help comprise the situations to which black nat'm responds.  
Posts from Carrol, Yoshie (points 2,3, & 4), Charles Brown, WKiernan and
Wahneema point to issues that can't be outsourced to blacks (on- or
offlist) and black 
nationalists wthout turning the list into a political suburb.  When i 
*was* a black nationalist years back, I didn't begin from, or occupy, the 
position that whites _couldn't_ take part in anti-racist struggle.  I began
from the 
resignation that the nonblack progressives I knew *didn't* take part, or 
insiisted that they were no more than pinchhitters--that is, they were doing 
me and only "my" people a favor when they did. By thinking as pinchhitters,
their positions were as clumsy as the position taken by that website opposing 
OneNation.  That was then.  
On the upside,  the terrific and funny posts in the "OneNation" 
thread & the "Butler... dispossession" thread (i wish i could write like them!)
likewise suggest, as have folks in this thread, that cultural conflicts are 
often "resolved" by society's ascribing those problems onto the groups that 
it leaves out/behind.   These all seemto be great examples of Butler's 
argument that folks often believe they become more powerful and centered
subjects 
(eg, Australian, masculine, progressive activist, etc) by repudiating even
more of 
what makes us what we are.  (from chapter5, "Refused Identifications").

raphael