Nathan Newman wrote:
>Doug-- These accusations of racism around trade issues are getting really
>ridiculous.
-No, it's the use of racist stereotypes by labor partisans in trade -issues that's getting really ridiculous. I didn't write that ugly -passage - Harold Meyerson did. I didn't write about the threat of -Chinese takeover of our utilities - Joan Claybrook did. I didn't hold -up signs in Seattle worrying about the influx of Mexican truckers - -the Teamsters did. Etc.
And you choose to insist that those are references not to those GOVERNMENTS' poor regulatory and labor relations.
Europeans regularly and rightly scoff at companies operating under American conditions versus their own. Is that racist on their part or a condemnation of Reaganite deregulation?
You are accusing a lot of people with strong commitments to racial justice of racist meanings, when there are clear non-racist interpretations of their statements. And it is those non-racist meansing that reflect their views, not your slanders.
-Organized labor in the US has a disgraceful -history on these issues, and they still haven't shaken the habit. Yes -there are honorable exceptions, but your pointing to them doesn't -excuse the troglodytes.
But you aren't attacking the trogodytes. You're attacking labor progressives.
And by your seeming argument, a bad history means that we should now collaborate in making labor conditions worse globally as penance?
In fact, for much of the postwar period, labor signed onto to "free trade" pretty mindlessly. So was George Meany the epitome of non-racist trade policy compared to the racism of today's labor leaders?
I fully recognized that racist history within the labor movement. I've been having the students in the labor studies class I'm teaching at Bard College read Paul Buhle's TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS to make sure they recognize it. We're reading the section on the AFL-CIA collaboration in destroying Guatamalan and other Latin American labor unions tomorrow in class.
But that history does not erase the other positive history of many labor unionists helping lead the political fight for civil rights, including supporting the Fair Employment Practices Committee in 1944, supporting the civil rights movement and civil rights laws in the post-war period, supporting the UFW in the 1960s and current strong support for progressive international union organizing.
Yes, there is a mixed history, but not one-sided enough for you to unilaterally rule other people racist at the wave of your rhetorical wand.
-- Nathan