I think both you and Adolph Reed are "getting real work done." Why the sudden turn in your rhetoric toward downright nastiness and petty personal attack? I have always valued the BRC News because of its sharp polemic that nonetheless avoided plumbing the sewers for invective. If you have political criticisms of Reed, fine, but slurs are not convincing.
Sometimes I go ballistic on this list, but then I apologize. You seem to be on a roll. What's up?
Sure there is White supremacism in the left, and sexism and heterosexism as well. It is a constant struggle. But Bernice Johnson Reagon and the late Audre Lorde argue that rebuilding a diverse left as a coalition project is the only way we can all achieve our goals. You probably disagree, but do you think Reagon and Lorde are a "mouthpiece for the White Supremacist Left, pure and simple," or can you see their value as philosophers and political organizers with a universal reach?
-Chip Berlet
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Coal
I is the total black, being spoken from the earth's inside. There are many kinds of open how a diamond comes into a knot of flame how sound comes into a words, coloured by who pays what for speaking.
Some words are open like a diamond on glass windows singing out within the crash of sun Then there are words like stapled wagers in a perforated book - buy and sign and tear apart - and come whatever will all chances the stub remains an ill-pulled tooth with a ragged edge. Some words live in my throat breeding like adders. Other know sun seeking like gypsies over my tongue to explode through my lips like young sparrows bursting from shell. Some words bedevil me
Love is word, another kind of open. As the diamond comes into a knot of flame I am Black because I come from the earth's inside Now take my word for jewel in the open light.
---Audre Lorde
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----- Original Message ----- From: "Art McGee" <amcgee at well.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 12:43 AM Subject: RE: Leftists (white) and Black Liberation
> > I don't know Gilroy, but I do know Adolph Reed, and
> > that's almost libelously false. If Adolph is alienated
> > from anything, it's academia. He spends much of his life
> > running around organizing on behalf of the Labor Party.
> > You can say that's a waste of time, but it's most
> > certainly not evidence of someone "alienated from and
> > hostile to regular working-class people."
>
> Please, spare us your feigned incredulity. The Labor Party
> is a laughing stock and a prime example of using a token
> Negro to make itself appear to speak to the masses.
>
> The only thing Reed does much of is pop out of his cave
> every now and then to take potshots at those getting real
> work done. He's a mouthpiece for the White Supremacist Left,
> pure and simple.
>
> I think I saw his Negro ass walking down the street one day
> and talking to himself. He was saying something like "My
> house is not a castle, but it suits me fine." Hahahahaha!
>
>
> Art
>