Only when by "communicating with African Americans" you mean embracing "gangsta rap" and generally pandering to the feeling of streets thugs. Most African-Americans I know have no problems siding with- and voting for the mainstream Democratic candidates. Au contraire, many of them find my red - green sympathies a bunch of pie-in-the-sky BS.
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chuck0 replied:
Yep, the politics of many African-Americans are pretty fucked up these days. This is why I roll my eyes when I hear other activists argue that we need to tone down our radical politics to reach more African Americans. Of course our radical anti-capitalist politics aren't going to appeal to a segment of the population obsessed with relgious idiocy, the Democratic Part, and the worse forms of capitalist consumerism.
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A few anecdotes to provide prospective -
A Korean-American friend complains that his family, friends and associates in the Korean community are success obsessed and "incapable" of analyzing the broader issues of justice, imperialism and capitalism.
A lesbian friend reports feeling very lonely in her 'community' because her fact-supported, carefully reasoned opposition to War Plan Iraq and the occupation falls on deaf ears amongst her associates and even her lover.
My Latino cousin laments the "party spirit" and "small goals" of the community. "If they have a decent working class job and a nice house" he says "all other considerations about what's wrong with the system are tossed out."
.......
Do you remember that there were two, major threads of thought within the old civil rights movement?
One. The nation is rotten to the core and must be changed via relentless critical analysis - both of racial issues and of the capitalist order itself - and, eventually, direct revolutionary action.
Two. If you'll only stop giving me beat downs for trying to sit at friggin lunch counters with White folks, let me go to good schools, stop preventing me from moving from impoverished areas, give me a fair chance to compete for good jobs and let me have a chance to join the board of directors of major corporations, I'll be happy.
Blackcommentator.com continues to reflect the first view, while Colin Powell and Condi Rice are the logical result of the successes of approach number two.
For many African Americans (and probably most immigrants) enjoying the benefits of the capitalist order has been the goal. When you say, "this system must be dismantled", you're speaking a language that seems both foolish and outlandish. It's like the difference between alchemists and physicists.
Why did the physicists win? Because their theories produced tangible results. An alchemist might have talked about some alchemical ultimate weapon, but the physicists have unlocked fission and fusion and given us thermonuclears - undisputed champs of the weapons of mass destruction sweepstakes.
I suspect that to many African Americans, the sort of talk of theoretical good that will come once the tangible bad has been replaced must seem like making a choice between hiring an alchemist and a physicist to get a job done.
Or, to put it another way, nearly everyone can see the bad that comes from corporate capitalism - the closed plants, the shattered lives, the workers discarded like garbage, the bizarre identification with your jailor - but we can also see the lovely homes and high performance cars of those who win.
And isn't it the most American trait of all to believe that in a sea of 'losers' you'll be the one who wins?
Have you ever watched 'Tony Brown's Journal" on PBS? With comforting regularity, he admonishes African Americans to buy hotel chains and take other steps to become super-capitalists. The experiences of Asians and Jews are often mentioned as models to follow.
This is a continuation of the 'up by your bootstraps' school of thought first expressed fully by George Washington Carver which remains a strong thread of thought in conventional circles of Black life. As it is built upon a faith in the American way (just give me a chance to succeed) you shouldn't be surprised that it is completely at odds with any socialist, communist, black flag or otherwise radical critique.
The 'gansta rap', bling-bling consumerism we all love to hate is simply an offshoot of the genteel pro-capitalism of an earlier time. These hard (or, sometimes, faux hard) young men still believe that America will deliver the goods. They've just dropped the good corporate job part of the formula and celebrate the underground economy. Which, despite its outlaw patina, is still purely capitalist.
Devotion to the Dems, the party traditionally associated with delivering the laws and government support for the 'bootstrap' program, is also a logical phenomena.
African Americans' politics are no more (and no less) "fucked up" than anyone elses.
DRM
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