Charles' reply is especially stimulating. And Ken's raises several imp. questions as well. There has still not been a point by point response to my criticism of separate black organizations under the header immigration. My criticism centered on their effect on class politics, not on whether they were the cause of white racism.
I will make a few quick replies, and offer a considered response later.
1. Facts
a. on DRUM, I was relying on Alkalimat's summary which mentions lack of external support and internal divisions; Michael will note that Allen's review also emphasises the bureaucratic degeneration of the organization and the atrophy of the actual workers' councils. Ken's story was not in Alkalimat's short summary.
b. Farakhan. Brown philosopher Lewis Gordon said that he had become an open supporter of the Republican Party; this was in a private conversation over breakfast. If anyone can verify, that would be great.
c. Baraka's early anti semitism is mentioned in Stanley Crouch's "Nationalism of Fools" in Notes From a Hanging Judge.
d. I meant to say that the BRC seems to be the only visible socialist/Marxist black freedom organizatin, not the only black organization.
e. Dorothy Roberts' raises the problem of anti birth control sentiment in the black community as a result of a fear over racist genocidal population control which by the way she thinks does more service as a reactionary discourse than an actual plan of the state at this point. However, far from denying that such fear was only paranoia, I was the one who underlined that family caps are frightening and insidious. But this is something black militants and non black feminists can fight together against. I maintain that the danger of black nationalism turning anti feminist is greater at the present time than feminism turning racist.At any rate, I don't see any reason to privilige one over the other as minor or major.
Also though I object to family caps and support affirmative action, Charles still has the gall to accuse me of Reaganite racism just because I am skeptical of race exclusive organizations.
f. I do not deny residential segregation; nor do I deny the existence of widespread discrimination in all facets of social life. I do maintain that class and race oppression are practicially confounded--see for example post on discriminaton against blacks and the unemployed in the criminal justice system. And I do agree that the interaction of race and class oppression is greater than the parts. Therefore, I support affirmative action from college admissions to public sector jobs (e.g. fireman) to union leadership.; the question now becomes how to defend and expand it for minority working people while preventing it from only taking the form of minority franchising and business set asides. My criticism of black nationalism makes me defend affirmative action even more strongly.
g. Frances Cress Welsing gave the second best attended talk when I lived in Oakland/East Bay (Farakhan was first); she and her Africana mystics were played on pacifica radio on occassional African Liberation weekends (this garbage mental liberation stuff is the best way to imprison the black mind--see Stephen Howe Afrocentrism); she was blared in the garvey bookstore I spent hours in.I also think she is some kind of FBI plant; she began her Berkeley speech by explaining why she had come to reject her interest in OLiver Cox for her cress theory of race relatins. Moreover, as you invoke the existence of a unified nationalism weighing down on black people, then how do you explain its persistence, its tenacity, its ability to win the easy cooperation of whites? Do you really think these organizations have really served the interests of all whites as if they all were extended kin?
I have also raised the question of how black separatist ideology in which certain elite blacks have a stake can discourage blacks from joining broad labor, socialist or communist groupings. Welsing's ideas are only the reduction ad absurdum of that ideology.
f. I never said black leaders were living off welfare. I did imply that some of them (jackson, farakhan, woodson, chavis) were hustlers. I am also for holding black leaders to the same critical standards to which we hold all theorists and political leaders. To do otherwise would be racist. Moreover, I have argued at length that Robt Brenner is a bourgeois Marxist; I dimissed Bourdieu's critique of Walras as inverted Walrasianism; I launched ad hominems against left keynesians for selling the snake oil that they could tame the business cycle and solve economic crisis. You think any of this is helping my career, Charles? You think I won't pick on anyone else? Given the heftiness of the charge, would you please quote exactly what I have written that you think is racist?
2. other quick replies to Charles
a. I think the proliferation of ethno racial political organizations on the model of Black Power groups is a proliferation of powerlessness.
b. it's a jump to say because an organization, say a union, is racist it is also white nationalist. That union may not represent several other
groups of workers some of whom are whtie as well--women, illegals, the unemployed; it may not challenge the arbitrary craft, gender or "skill" hierarchy of labor within the firm.
Moreover, by not supporting blacks, unions have most often set the conditions for undercutting their ability to represent their members--so much for whtie nationalism. But here I will have to revisit Mike Davis' history of Operation Dixie.
Just because an organization is racist that doesn't mean it has been serving the interests of all whites. Despite all these white nationalist organizations, it is still a fact that many white people suffer too. Blacks die at a higher rate from heart disease than whties. But the gap between white collar workers and blue collar workers is even greater, suggesting that much of black suffering derives from their overrepresentatin among the hard core industrial working class and that therefore their emancipation depends on the emancipation of the working class a whole.
Moreover, many of these organizations whether trade unions or socialist or communist parties are not only racist but also revisionist, i.e., they hold out the possibility of labor capital cooperation and proffer the belief in the reformability of capitalism through traditional means.
Any org which is committed to making capitalism work better so it can get a better share for some of its members is committed to turning away from and writing off ever larger chunks of the global proletariat whose plight simply cannot be remedied under capitalism. Racism follows from revisionist practice.
yours, rakesh