joanna bujes wrote:
>
> The larger, more interesting issue
> that was raised, was that of racism in the U.S. -- how it has shifted
> shapes in the last fifty years and how we need to address it now.
And that is really a profoundly misleading question, and invites or even guarantees the kind of nonsense that has appeared in these threads.
The question that needs to be asked (and it will lead back to, in the proper context, some of the questions raised in these threads) is the strategy and tactics for fighting the oppression and exploitation of black people in the United States. The recent brief exchange between Grant & myself & Yoshie on gay marriage illustrates the needed perspective.
The core weakness of the working class (and thus of the left) for 200 years in the United States has been the oppression of black people (and the ideological expression of that oppression in the consciousness of most white _and_ black workers (all workers). That consciousness cannot be changed by mere preaching, since people for the most part only listen to preaching (and understand it if they do listen) when they find themselves involved in struggles that provide a material grounds for the grasping of the preaching as other than mere preaching.
Workers that do not fight against gay oppression will be worthless comrades in other struggles too. This is all the more true in respect to that fundamental shape of u.s. history, the oppression of black people. Those who do not struggle against that oppression will be worthless in struggles of their own. The task of self-conscious leftists is to join into all the struggles which history presents to us and to point out the necessity of incorporating anti-racist struggle within those struggles.
When R and John speak of white people as a coherent group they echo the fundamental premise of racist ideology, that races exist.
Intellectual failure can be as bad as or worse than malign will in the struggle against racism.
Carrol