Paul Gilroy wrote, "Against Race, " for Harvard Univ. Press, last yr. Read the chapter in Transitions on Marcus Garvey and Italian Fascism. Check the HUP website, think they have a chapter online.
Piece of left sectariana on Vulliamy. He was in a Merseyside revolutionary group in the UK called Big Flame in the 70's. The neo-Trot group, International Marxist Group, (see for a chapter on them a book by David Bouchier on British ideological tendencies from the late 70's) initiated a Socialist Unity project in the late 70's that included, "Big Flame." Michael Pugliese in the 70's. Michael Pugliese
-----Original Message----- From: Ian Murray <seamus2001 at home.com> To: Lbo-Talk at Lists. Panix. Com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Cc: pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu <pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu> Date: Saturday, August 25, 2001 5:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:16342] more on reparations
>Black leaders divided over reparations for slavery
>
>Special report: UN conference against racism
>
>Ed Vulliamy New York
>Sunday August 26, 2001
>The Observer
>
>The United States' threat to boycott a world conference on racism in
>South Africa this week - because of the inclusion of reparations for
>slavery on the agenda - has fuelled debate among leading black figures
>over placing a price on suffering at the hands of atrocity.
>
>With reparations hailed as the 'hottest civil rights issue' by
>Newsweek magazine, some black leaders and thinkers in America are
>denouncing the idea that a cheque can compensate for the abomination
>of slavery.
>
>They do so not because they agree with President Bush that the present
>need not reckon with its past, but because, as author Shelby Steele
>puts it, 'when you trade on the past victimisation of your own people,
>you trade honour for dollars'.
>
>Many civil rights politicians and activists, including Coretta Scott
>King - Martin Luther King's widow - plan to attend the Durban
>conference. But the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, himself black,
>says he will not attend if reparations and another item equating
>Zionism with racism are included.
>
>The movement for reparations, introduced to Congress in 1989, has
>gained ground in America in the past year through political pressure
>and a bestselling book The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks by
>Randall Robinson, who has joined O.J. Simpson's defender, Johnnie
>Cochran, in a reparations lawsuit against the federal government to be
>filed next spring.
>
>'The history of slavery in America has never been fully addressed in a
>public forum,' said Professor Charles Ogletree of Harvard University,
>co-ordinating the suit. 'Litigation will show what slavery meant, how
>it was profitable and how the issue of white privilege is still with
>us.'
>
>But those who inform black American opinion are divided over the scope
>of reparations; some in favour of blanket federal funds, others
>preferring targeted litigation over specific, broken treaties - with
>others arguing that they should not bepaid at all.
>
>Shelby Steele is the best-known black opponent of all reparations.
>Labelled a 'neo-conservative', Steele said reparations fall into line
>behind the fight for welfare programmes that 'only subsidised black
>intertia'. 'The demand for reparations,' he said, 'is yet another
>demand for white responsibility, when today's problem is a failure of
>black responsibility.'
>
>A more radical position argues that paying off the African-American
>community does not open the portal into a history of savage racism but
>slams it shut. Among them is Paul Gilroy, professor of
>African-American studies at Yale University, who says: 'This is what a
>consumer culture does: makes financial transactions and commodities
>out of injustices. It'll be "there's your money, now shut up".'
>
>The inclusion of reparations on the Durban agenda is supported by
>Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. 'Groups that suffer
>today because of slavery or other severe racist practices,' said Human
>Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth, 'should be compensated
>by governments responsible for these practices.'
>
>Related articles
>24.08.2001: Bush urged not to withdraw from racism conference
>28.07.2001: America may boycott racism summit
>26.07.2001: Summit on racism jeopardised by anti-Zionist draft
>29.06.2001: Africans call for slavery reparations
>
>Useful links
>UN conference against racism
>European commission against racism
>Racism and public policy conference
>
>
>
>