SOme of us do fight the Klan; I've had close friends whose husbands and comrades were murdered doing it. But our view was that it was _everyone's_ job to fight the Klan: Sandy Smith was black, Cesar Cauce was Hispanic, Jim Waller was white. I'm Jewish, and the Klan hates me as much as it hates you. We can't make racism and oppression go away by pretending they don't exist, but we can't overcome them by accepting them as given, either, and then saying that it's the job of white people to deal with the worst whites.
>Ah, "put up with it", hum...well, thanks Boss, for
>tolerating my presence here.
Actually, I was suggesting that we lobster, black and white, not tolerate being mau-maued, so you can slam me for intolerance, but not for liberal condescension. But if that's not what you are doing, what's called for is discussion.
>
> > so that they won't be guilty of being racist scum
>
>Yes, that's it, let's exaggerate and distort my intentions
>and critique so as to marginalize and dismiss the points
>I've been trying to make.
Well, you called white lobsters white supremicists, which is not much nicer in my book.
but right now, on a semi-private mailing
>list, a large group of Black people are having a discussion,
>in the year 2001, that has the topic "Are White People
>Inherently Evil?" I'm not making that up. The consensus was
>running in favor of them being irredeemable.
The depth and fervor of racial hostility in this country isn't news. Malcolm X was startling people with this sort of sentiment almost 50 years ago. It's not news, either, that things haven't improved much. Black hostility to whites is entirely understandable. But it's the job of radicals to try to help outrage find words supported by defensible understandings of the world, and to seek useful targets. A racial understanding of the world, one in which the main conflict is between races, is just wrong, and "the white race" is not a sensible target, because it doesn't exist. There's a structure of oppression in which people of greater or lesser sub-Saharan African descent are oppressed, and people of European descent are advantaged--in many cases, whether they want to be or not. That structure intersects in complicated ways with class exploitation and gender oppressions. Most blacks are workers and half of them are women. In the face of this situation, "Get whitey," or even "Get away from whitey," is not helpful.
Israel, which started this thread, should provide a salutary warning about the limits of nationalism. It is difficult to imagine a group that was thoroughly oppressed than the Eastern European Jewry that founded the state of Israel, operating on the plausible assumption that Jews needed a nation-state of their own. Despite a certain degree of initially socialist commitments, however, the Israeli Jews failed to successfully address any of the contradictions of class or gender, and they simply took over the racialized ideology that had nearl;y led to their own annihilation and imposed a version of it on the land they took. ANd here we are, almost a year into the Second Intifadeh, and nationalism has destroyed almost everything that was admirable or hopeful in the Zionist project. Do you want to just replay that?
>
>If anything, you should be thankful that there are Black
>people like me who even take the time to dialogue with you
>AT ALL.
OK, so let's talk. And talking straight, to answer your earlier question: no, I do not support the claim of any Black Americans to lay hold of some chunk of territory to rule as a black nation, and to subordinate, drive out, or kill any white folk who happen to be living there. Even if I thought that nationalism was a good idea, which I don't, that's not real world talking. Unlike the Zionists, who were initially backed by mighty imperialist powers, and who then had to briefly fight a drastically weakened one in full retreat from an empire it could no longer hold, the black natioanlist revolution has no powerful backing. Talk of armed nationalist revolution in AMerica is craziness. But even if it was not, it would be a bad idae because race and nation are not solutions to the problems of ending racial and national oppression.
>Most of the time, Black folks simply disengage themselves
>from any MEANINGFUL interaction with whites, and then white
>folks look around and can't figure out why their
>organizations and gatherings are so devoid of Blacks or
>other people of color. We simply stop bothering or caring.
>
Well, keep plugging away, then. It's appreciated/
>Most of the time, I simply lurk on the list and don't engage
>in the debates. Part of the reason is that I'm too busy
>doing real work, but part of it is that I know that I am too
>emotional when it comes to subjects like Reparations, etc.,
>too engage in debate. For people like me, there nothing to
>debate about issues like Reparations, etc., and when I hear
>intentionally ignorant things coming out of the mouths of
>white comrades, it really makes my blood boil.
No one's intentionally ignorant. If people are misguided, there's no other way among people who call each other comrades but to argue. (There, Kenneth, you happy?) BUt of course there are things to debate, even among people who are agreed on common goals.
jks
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