I've already said that if anarchists don't think that's a problem, so be it. Just don't expect others not to think of it as a problem of the anarchist movement.
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>We're not like a job where we can turn black people away.
Affirmative action means more than simply "not turning black people away" when they do show up -- it had better include active efforts to recruit and retain the currently underrepresented -- even in the context of employment and public education.
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>If they feel we are speaking for their needs, they'll come. If they
>don't, they won't.
I definitely agree, and not speaking for the needs of people of color is a problem.
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>While Yoshie thinks anarchists should be more concerned with
>anarchists stealing blacks from some other left-wing group into our
>groups
Nowhere did I suggest anything of the sort. There is no shortage of blacks and other people of color whose needs are not met by any organization.
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>I'm more concerned that working class white people, e.g. the type of
>people I have regular contact with every day, are heading steadily
>further and further towards conservatism and the Republican party.
>Let's look at some recent polls:
>-------
>http://www.ipsos-reid.com/media/dsp_displaypr_cdn.cfm?id_to_view=1622
>
>Other key findings on Congressional party control preference:
>
>* Republicans hold a lead among white registered voters (49%-40%),
>while trailing Democrats among African Americans (83%-3%) and
>Hispanic voters (58%-27%).
>
>* White voters divide sharply by age, however, with whites under age
>45 strongly Republican (54%-36%) and whites age 45 and older evenly
>divided (44%-44%).
>-----
>So there are 5 white Republicans for every 4 white Democrats, and it
>gets more lopsided the younger one gets! Should anarchists be
>concerned about the rightward drift of whites? No, we should be,
>according to Yoshie, pulling part of that 83% of black Democrats
>into our part of the leftist camp.
Is there any contradiction between being concerned about underrepresentation of people of color in anarchism and being concerned about the rightward drift of white voters? Can't you be concerned about both? If you can't, you might explain why.
I'd think that the rightward drift of white voters and of both the RP and the DP is all the more reason for building up a left-wing social movement that actually represents the interests of people of color and whites who are _alienated_ by the very rightward drift of the two main electoral parties.
Why look at only the voters (especially if you are an anarchist!)? There are lots of people who are not voting for the rightward drift. The majority are not voting at all. Voters are outnumbered by non-voters in most US elections, and increasingly more so:
***** ...[T]he national turnout rate has plunged almost continually over the last four decades, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 National Turnout Percentages: 1960-1998
Presidential Congressional 1960 62.8 1962 45.4 1964 61.9 1966 45.4 1968 60.9 1970 43.5 1972 55.2 1974 35.9 1976 53.5 1978 34.9 1980 52.8 1982 38.0 1984 53.3 1986 33.5 1988 50.3 1990 33.1 1992 55.1 1994 37.4 1996 48.9
Note and Source: Congressional data represent the percentage of the voting age population voting for U.S. Representative. Data are taken from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1998, p. 289.
In 1996, the turnout of just 49 percent of the voting age population (VAP) marked the first time that participation in a presidential contest had fallen below the 50 percent mark since the early 1920s -- when women had just received the franchise and not yet begun to use it very frequently (see Merriam and Gosnell, 1924). In 1997, not a single one of the eleven states that called its citizens to the polls managed to get a majority to vote. The best turnout occurred in Oregon, where a heated campaign took place on the question of whether to repeal the state's "right to die" law. The worst turnout of 1997 was a shockingly low 5 percent for a special election in Texas. This occurred even though Governor Bush stumped the state for a week, urging people to participate and promising that a "Yes" vote would result in a major tax cut.
<http://www.democ.uci.edu/democ/papers/marty.html> *****
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>If Yoshie were an anarchist, I might listen to what she is saying,
>but she's not
That's narrow-minded, to say the least. Do you normally listen to and work with only anarchists and no other kinds of leftists? What's the point of listservs like this one, where anarchists, socialists, populists, social democrats, etc. mingle together?
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>The anarchist mentality is to form groups with others in your
>community who share similar concerns and ideas, and then eventually
>federating with others.
That may still work, but the historical moment for that may have passed. Increasing class polarization within communities of color means increasing difficulties of organizing blacks as blacks, Latinos as Latinos, etc. The trouble of the Black Radical Congress (Art's remark about lack of finance for the BRC, responses to my query on other listservs indicating political differences within the BRC, etc.) probably has something to do with it.
At 7:31 PM -0500 1/2/03, Lance Murdoch wrote:
>If you think people of color should be anarchists, and obviously you
>don't, you think they should be communists or marxists or whatever,
>then go out and do that.
Not really. When folks get radicalized, most political tendencies grow together at early stages of radicalization, rather than one growing at the expense of the others. -- Yoshie
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