> On Aug 19, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> > On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Aug 19, 2011, at 9:14 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> >>> The chief symptom of racism on the left is the failure to take seriusly
> >> the intellectual and theoretical importance of the Black Panthers.
> >>
> >> A group that essentially disappeared before half the U.S. pop was born?
> >>
> >> Doug
> > Like most radical labor unions, Frankfurt School scholars, Karl Marx and
> a
> > raft of other folks, no? You can't possibly be arguing that actions,
> groups
> > and intellectual efforts that have been seriously outside the mainstream
> > since 1978 - I just chose a date - are unimportant.
>
> Of course not. But this centrality of the BPs that Carrol keeps harping
> seems rather disproportional. They were part of a broad upsurge. This "chief
> symptom" business sounds more like an advertisement for one's own
> righteousness than a serious bit of analysis.
>
> Doug
>
> I saw it in the context of the larger thread's focus on how to engage race
- which CC didn't make explicit, but I see where you were coming from. I
guess the other point that could be made is that the BP were anything but
monolithic in their reading of politics and praxis.