Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Tue Dec 31 12:52:59 PST 2002


Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


>Why then do the Democrats and the Republicans include more blacks
>and other people of color than anarchists do?

I suspect that an anti-government message doesn't always play well among poorer people who look to government for social benefits and public education - and some years back, to federal troops to overpower racist state and local officials. Yes, police brutality could inspire antistate attitudes, but poorer nonwhite people also complain about how cops ignore their neighborhoods. (And if you're afraid of the cops, you're not going to want to join movements that sometimes taunt them.) I have a lot of respect for anarchism but its popular image - not fairly - is a bit like the libertarian attitude someone once characterized as "I got mine so fuck you." For people who look to the state's redistributionist function it's hard to be antistatist.

Doug



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