>>> Carrol Cox
Of course not. That is why we can't make the fight against structural/instituional racism depend on "persuading" whites to be nice.
^^^ CB: Correct. We want to persuade them to do things like vote for a Black person for President. The ultimate aim is to unite the multi-racial working class to make socialism. This is why you are wrong to oppose unity as a goal.
^^^^^^^ It won't work. Rather we have to mobilzie forces that make the preservation of instituional racism so unpleasant (as the preservation of Jim Crow was so unpleasant)
^^^^ CB: The main forces mobilized in this case were White people. They moved in support of Civil Rights activists , like Parks and King, with whom they felt sympathy. These forces also felt good about themselves. Their own high morality of being non-racist and anti-racist inspired them. Similarly, many of Obama's supporters feel good about their own voting for a Black person. They feel good about their high moral acts which are in themselves the "overcoming" structural racism.
The whole process is an example of Marx's notion that "the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-changing can be conceived and rationally understood only as revolutionary practice."
^^^^
that forces among our enemies (e.g. Senator Dirksen, LBJ, etc.) will began to dismantle those institutions and structures no matter how racist most whites remain, and once those structures are badly damaged, the material grounds for racism will begin to dissolve and so will racism. It will probably take a lot of bloodshed.
CArrol
^^^^ CB: Well, Frederick Douglass suggests that there is no progress without struggle, and the struggle can be moral or physical or both. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk