-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Color of Anarchism Re: Protest ISO... Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2003 00:27:18 -0500 (EST) From: JBrown72073 at cs.com Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
Chuck0 writes:
>Let's keep in mind that the ratio of African-Americans in the general
>American population is around 12%. If our movements could get near that
>rate, on a national average, that would be pretty good.
If you define the movement as only the euro-dominated movement. I figure in the U.S. south, half the movement is black, if you think about organization, consciousness, grassroots power, movement resources, and cogent criticism of the existing structures--way out of proportion to the number of African Americans in the population.
There's something wrong with the way this discussion is going, then. The movements of the 60s were instigated by the black struggle first. Women's liberation came directly and documentably out of the Civil Rights Movement and specifically black-led SNCC, just as the Women's Rights Movement of the 19th c sprang from the anti-slavery struggle. If we can't understand this is the wellspring then we (Euroamericans and others) won't see why we not only should want, but desperately need the leadership and contributions of the African-American movement. The question is can white folks follow black leadership, and I don't mean by joining the organizations but by shutting up and listening for a while.
'People of Color' is a phrase that obscures the specific history of slavery in the Americas, so if we're going to use it we should understand that it has this weakness, although it has other strengths.
Jenny Brown