Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO...

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 9:00 PM -0500 12/31/02, Chuck0 wrote:
>>If you don't think the whiteness of anarchism is a problem, so be 
>>it. Don't expect others not to think of it as a problem of the 
>>anarchist movement, though.  Not everyone's head is in the sand.
>
>Or we could talk about the whiteness of socialism, the whiteness of 
>the ISO, or the whiteness of this list.

Sure we can -- let's go right ahead.  I'm far from satisfied with 
racial representation in socialism, the ISO, and this list.

At 9:00 PM -0500 12/31/02, Chuck0 wrote:
>I think the anarchist movement is doing a good job of talking and 
>doing something about this situation.

It appears that there has been much denial that "this situation" is a 
problem at all.

At 9:00 PM -0500 12/31/02, Chuck0 wrote:
>We aren't vanguardists who recruit people of color as tokens and 
>window dressing for our organizations, so pardon us if we do things 
>a tad bit differently.

Do you think of people of color in the Republican Party, the 
Democratic Party, socialist orgs ("vanguard" or rearguard), etc. as 
"tokens" or "window dressings," in other words dumb tools of smarter 
white people?  It's not a good idea to underestimate the intelligence 
of people of color whose politics differs from yours.  They know what 
they are doing.

Besides, things have changed since the USA of the pre-civil-rights 
days.  Institutions with which I've compared the anarchist movement 
unfavorably have gone beyond "tokens" and "window dressings."  We 
don't live in the days when all positions of power were exclusively 
in white hands, all well paid jobs were monopolized by white workers, 
etc. any more.  It's time to confront the reality of historical 
change, even though the result of historical change is still far from 
proportional representation.  There were times when the anarchist 
movement in the US was more racially inclusive than US Congress; now 
it's the other way around.
-- 
Yoshie

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