[lbo-talk] who?

Dennis Claxton ddclaxton at earthlink.net
Tue Oct 27 10:30:15 PDT 2009


At 03:48 AM 10/27/2009, Doug Henwood wrote:


>A lot of this sort of agitation - this piece, Wise, Catalyst - focuses
>on racism on the left.

I didn't get that from this piece. From Wise, yes, but not this. It wasn't concentrating on racism so much as miscommunication or no communication.


>Yeah. If you went to an anti-war march full of middle-class hippies
>and loudly declared it to be somehow lacking in authenticity due to
>the absence of burly "working-class" types, you'd be treated as an
>annoying pest, even a reactionary.

I don't get this either. This wasn't someone going to the march and yelling at participants. It's someone writing about how to get more participants involved.


> But if you instead attributed the lack of authenticity to the
> absence of people of color, somehow you've put your finger on an
> inexcusable failing of the organizers and weeks of workshopping
> would be required to rectify the error.

Let's take another example. If there'd been a little workshipping to rectify this kind of error during the Prop 8 vote in California things would very likely have turned out differently. Instead, you wound up with some misplaced scapegoating of blacks in California for the loss.



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