Michael Hoover wrote:
> didn't suggest it [DRUM] was typical, my post related Ernest Allen's view
> that
> nationalist sentiment 'in one form or another' pervaded the organization
> from top to bottom...suggests, to me anyway, nationalism(s) rather
> than a reified nationalism (although a particular variant may
> have been/be dominant)...point is made above if names listed are all
> nationalist (which says nothing about the attractiveness - or not - of
> their particular politics nor exhausts list)...
The EEOC has just issued a report on the progress Mitsubishi has made in dealing with sexual harassment in the Normal Illinois plant. Assuming that the writers put the best face they can on the matter, and that the local paper prettied it up a bit more, the report seems to indicate that not very damn much progress has been made. That is, it would appear that the bulk of the white male workers there are either scabs or workers more tolerant of scabs than of trouble-makers. I really doubt that the problem of extreme sexism, perhaps more accurately,. sheer misogynism, within the work force will eventually have to be dealt with by semi-vigilante methods developed by women's caucuses within the various work places.
Those caucuses, *when* not *if* they develop, may be caucuses within which a class line predominates. They will therefore see their task as developing male-female working class unity *through* the operations of independent women's groups. Idiots (I prefer this term to Butler's "conservative marxists" for a number of reasons) within the working class movement, both marxist and non-marxist, both males and females, will write long critiques of petticoat nationalism and various other heresies. Some even many of those critiques will be quite correct -- but their writers will be political idiots because they will be unable to see (a) that women within the caucuses will be making the same critiques within the caucuses and (b) will be unable to see that by their external critiques, however academically correct, will in fact be giving material aid and comfort to class enemies within the caucuses.
I of course agree with everything Michael has to say here. Critiques of black nationalism by men and women who are not themselves self-defined members of the black community will have no effect except to provide grist for the mills of such nationalists as Farrakhan.
Carrol