>On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Art McGee wrote:
>
>> Only ignorant white folks, some of them who call themselves Marxists,
>> think that the reparations campaign is a "misguided" or "potentially
>> disastrous" political strategy.
>
>Fwiw, Adolph Reed, who's neither ignorant nor white, shares a similar
>view: http://www.progressive.org/reed1200.htm
>
>Michael
Adolph L. Reed Jr. says in "The Case Against Reparations": "The notion that white America, however defined, owes reparations to black Americans for slavery and its legacy has been around for some time" (at <http://www.progressive.org/reed1200.htm>). Why should a campaign for reparations be based upon the "notion that *white America*, however defined, owes reparations to black Americans for slavery and its legacy"? Why not organize a campaign on the ground that *the ruling class* owes reparations to black Americans for slavery and its legacy?
According to my understanding of slavery, racism, & their injuries, non-black American workers are also entitled to reparations for slavery and its legacy, but most of them have yet to become hip to their own injuries.... :-)
I don't claim that such a campaign is or will be practical, but since campaigns for reparations _already exist_, whether Reed likes it or not, a Marxist contribution to them should be to introduce the vantage point of class struggles & the concept of exploitation in them, I think. My advice to Reed is, "don't fight against the reparations campaigns, redefine them instead, so the campaigns become vehicles for all-sided political education as Lenin said."
Yoshie