First to Charles: as I said in private correspondence, family caps do raise the specter of racist eugenics and must be fought, but we should not let that fight carry over to paranoia about unversal access to birth control and abortion. That is, there is the danger that feminism will be seen as part of the conspiracy of black genocide. I think there is a real danger of such conflation.
Yoshie's original post seemed to be about the inappropriateness of talking about the NOI's anti-semitism on a white business observer list. I attempted a refutation. You broaden the argument by saying that we should stop critiquing black nationalism/separate black organizations/ separatist black politics because there are hardly any black people on this list (true? if true, isn't that the problem?); and others suggest the problems in black organizations are simply the result of white racism. The implication seems to be fight that and the negative aspects of black politics will go away.
And there is Raphael's suggestion that criticizing black leadership is simply displacing onto blacks the problems that whites have created. Of course this is the excuse every imagined neo colonial leadership has given to divert attention.
Moreover, how are we to get rid of white racism? Through exhortation, through playing more Charlie Pride on country stations, getting a few colored people on Friends, or through cooperative action that may be impossible of course if organize in a race specific manner.
Then in my mistitled post on immigration, I offered several responses to the problems and limits of organizations defined in racially exclusive terms. There has not been a point by point reponse to that either, though Charles' post is a clear rebuttal (of course Carrol won't bother and Raphael seems to think that's the way to proceed). However, I would mention the following problems in Charles' post.
a. Detroit may have unique demographics among major cities--still haven't read Judith Stein's or Thomas Sugrue's books on the history of Detroit (I would like to read these before responding to Charles' comments on Coleman Young); at any rate, Charles' post concentrates on white racism only while I raised the question of whether separate black organizations would undermine cooperation with the other groups that inhabit America and the same cities as blacks, as much as some may like to forget. After all, the very Chicago in which the BRC was held is quite a diverse place. Do we just wish things wouldn't be more complicated than black/white?
b. it is possible that there are black leaders/organizations which have a stake in the continuing segregation of the black community and thus wish to preserve it.
For example, we should not underestimate how much the Frances Welsing racially separatist ideology does affect black peoples' understanding of the world and increase skepticism about viability of that idealistic interracial cooperation so contemptuously dismissed by Kwame Ture under the influence of Malcolm X who only began to urge participation in the civil rights movement because he thought that would turn blacks against whites.
The belief in the intractability of anti black racism racism redounds to the advantage of those black elites who benefit
1. from keeping blacks in black exclusive organizations which they get to lead; 2. by winning office due to the compulsive voting for and supporting black politicos regardless of ideology and program; 3. by getting rich by encouraging a loyalty to buy black, no matter how shoddy or overpriced the merchandise, as a contribution to the advancement of the race as a whole.
There is also the danger that the race based organizations will refuse to cooperate in strikes and boycotts if the company agrees to more minority franchising. In his Jesse Jackson book, Reed reports that PUSH was willing to do just that. Doug noted it in a LBO too.
It simplifies black politics if we view all organizations as simply blameless victimized variations on the theme of black self defense from white racism. What are we to make of Earl Picard's criticisms of the economic strategy of Operation Push--it was in Telos in the mid 1980s?
In objecting to criticism of black nationalism, Yoshie raises several important questions.
I have been making an argument for why it is important for minorities to participate in integrated worker and pinko organizations, more important than race exclusive ones. You call the argument hot air while not proving that race exclusive congresses are actually not the utopian ventures. You also seem not to think there is any problem of compulsive anti communism in minority communities that needs to be confronted. That people are not seriously separatist does not mean that they are not anti-socialist, or anti communist like white or brown or yellow workers.
But of course since there are at present no other organizations really defending black people directly or indirectly, we should all enthusiatically support the BRC even if we express criticisms and hope that their initiatives are meant to draw and are successful in drawing support from other minority working class and feminist groups and the working class generally.
A side note: Abram Harris then sympathetic to Trotskyism supported the non racially exclusive Negro Labor Congress in the mid 1930s on the condition that fraternities and the clergy would be excluded. What a nice combo of openness and closedness. Who couldn't live with that.
Political racial separatism is utopian. But it still exercises a hold on the imagination--see Down on the Delta or the new nostalgia for segregation analyzed by Reed. This can be an independent impediment to building integrated organizations in addition to the fact that they often do not really serve the needs of the mass of black or other minority working people any more than minority set asides and black politicians do. Are the Labor Party, the DSA and CPUSA different in this regard? The last one certainly has a proud, though not perfect, history of anti racism. I skimmed through Mark Solomon's history of CP/black relations today, but have not read Earl Hutchinson's. And the Labor Party enjoys the participation of Botwinick and Reed. That seems pretty promising to me.
Yes, we must critique the use of all kinds of tax monies to subsidize eco-destructive white suburban flight or what Castells once called the suburban warfare state.
best, rakesh