----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Wednesday, March 07, 2001 9:51 AM Subject: Re: Horowitz/Reparations for slavery
> Michael Pollak posted:
>
> >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