I don't think that most people of color would look at all or mostly white left-wing formations and say happily, "Hey, at least they don't practice tokenism! Better than the Democrats and the Republicans!" Sardonically, perhaps....
At 1:45 PM -0500 12/31/02, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>I don't flip out if I go to a meeting and everyone there is white.
>Most of the people in my neighborhood are white, most of the people
>where I work are white, I go to a meeting and most of the people are
>white - why should the meeting be any different than my normal life?
>With the de facto segregation that exists in the US, it takes
>extraordinary effort to have an integrated meeting/group - is it
>always worth the effort? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
In my previous posts, I've already mentioned that residential patterns and social lives are still pretty segregated in the USA. Why then do the Democrats and the Republicans include more blacks and other people of color than anarchists do? It's not as if the Democrats and the Republicans live less segregated lives than anarchists do, is it?
At 1:45 PM -0500 12/31/02, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>I really find this nitpicking between groups over who has more
>tokens ridiculous.
Are blacks and other people of color who do join anarchist and socialist groups merely tokens, in your opinion? Don't we have our own reasons to join them when we do join them? I happened to join a group called Solidarity, but I didn't do so to become a token, whatever you think of the presence of the people of color who do join such groups.
At 1:45 PM -0500 12/31/02, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>So what should we do in response, go to primarily black anti-police
>brutality meetings and hand out flyers for ARA or whatever so we can
>get some more tokens in our group and feel better about ourselves in
>some liberal way and not feel like Yoshie or whoever will criticize
>us as much because we have some tokens now?
Aren't there reasons _other_ than making you feel better about yourself and defending the legitimacy of your politics in others' eyes when you make efforts to make any institutions -- especially left-wing political institutions -- racially representative of the nation we live in?
At 1:45 PM -0500 12/31/02, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>Anti-racist action goes out and sometimes actually gets into
>physical fights with the Klan. I don't know what more commitment
>black people would want from a group.
Sometimes, though, such groups look like they almost relish and actively look for physical confrontations with the Klan, the police, and the like. That's a problem from the points of view of most people of color.
At 1:45 PM -0500 12/31/02, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>The second reason is that black people just aren't interested in the
>message. Maybe they are a little but not enough to want to join the
>group, maybe they feel police brutality, reparations or whatever are
>a higher priority, maybe they're apathetic, burned out, maybe
>they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their head, maybe
>they're just not interested in what we have to say whatever. Well
>in this second case, I'm not as concerned that they aren't in the
>group - if we're not speaking to their needs, why should they join,
>I don't see any reason to go out and "convert" them. I'm more
>interested in seeing what groups they form (like the Black Panthers
>with their newspapers and social centers and whatnot) and then
>forming coalitions with them.
It is entirely possible that most people of color are not interested in the anarchist messages or tactics at all at this point in history. It may still make sense for white leftists to simply organize a group composed of all or mainly whites, and then to seek alliances with groups composed of other races/ethnic groups. A number of leftists -- blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos, others -- came to such a conclusion. The historical moment for that strategy may have passed, though. -- Yoshie
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