Joanna
----- Original Message ----- nice analysis.
I still don't see the worth of the remark however. It's a remark that expects blacks to act a certain way - become involved in OWS because it's in *their* interest particularly - whereas the speaker would never hold himself or white leftists to the same expectation that they get involved. Subject of history problem! Whites would be and have been allowed the individuality to claim some particular reason for non-involvement such as age, job responsibilities, family commitments, temperament, etc. But these responses from white activists *are* racialized. That we can't see whites' responses as racialized is the very character of much structural racism to begin with.
Second, as you indicate, there's a very different climate today than in 1955. In the south, if a black person got arrested (no doubt even if a white person got arrested) the repercussions for arrest were far different. A black man or woman in the south wasn't necessarily going to suffer the rest of her life for it. Today, you get arrested and it prevents you from obtaining a remarkable number of job opportunities. Nevermind the simple fact of the costs of being arrested and/or being wounded.
Finally, the experience and knowledge of police repression and socialization about how to respond to /avoid it is racialized. Callously ignoring that fact and attributing the ability to overcome it or not to some personal quality or even to some widespread pathology is hardly in the realm of left analysis. The fact is, whites *do* go to these protests largely unaware of police brutality and often shocked that they come up against it. Black children are socialized from a very early age how to handle themselves with cops, how to avoid being in contact with them, etc.
At 09:53 PM 12/14/2011, Carrol Cox wrote:
>It's hard to make any political sense out of what Joanna & whoever Steve
>Bruns is quoting have to say. We have the beginnings of a new left upsurge;
>until it incorporates the interest of Blacks (as seen by Blacks) it will be
>a crippled one. Joanna is engaging in mere way-out speculation abut motives
>of people she does not know. She ignores the obvious explanation. At the
>October anti-war (and specifically anti-Obama) rally & march in Chicago,
>Bruce Dixon of Black Agenda was one of the featured speakers. He made
>essentially the same points Glen Ford had made at the Left Forum last
>spring. There has of course been racist errors by white leftists in the
>Occupations. There's also, of course, innumerable other errors being
>committed, point out of which is really pointless. It's part of what happens
>in an emergent left movement. Black Agenda is having a hard time attracting
>Black support because of the overwhelming Black support at this time for
>Obama. That will disappear eventually. As the movement grows it will be more
>varied in composition than is now the case. Then various matters can be
>worked out/battled out within such a growing left.
>
>The apartheid state is a very special formation, not remotely the same as
>what Blacks face in the U.S. now or during the Civil Rights Movement. If you
>want to understand what was at issue then, I suggest you work at seeing that
>Rosa Parks on the Bus, the Panthers carrying guns into the California
>legislature were engaged in identical practices: Blacks were U.S. citizens,
>but that term was a mockery, both in the North and in the Jim Crow South,
>more formally in the South of course. The Civil Rights Movement was about
>making that citizenship actual. Separating Blacks and Whites on a bus in the
>South was a violation of formal citizenship, which the nation had allowed
>the South to continue uninterrupted. The various campaigns which followed
>forced the federal government to cease allowing this denial of formal
>citizenship rights to continue. Whites and Blacks had to aright to equal
>_formal_ treatment. California law specified that all citizens had a right
>to carry guns in the open. But police practice had in effect established
>that Black possession of guns was not to be allowed. In this case, the law
>was changed, denying all citizens the right to carry guns in the open. That
>change is/was an index to how hard it was for white America to accept
>'white' behavior by Blacks. The same sort of thing erupted in the later '60s
>around women. It was a bit more confused, but in effect women and men were
>not even nominally or formally 'equal before the law.' The present ongoing
>battle over gay marriage has the same core: recognition of formal bourgeois
>equality of citizenship.
>
>Blacks remained an oppressed segment of the population, including continuing
>police brutality and mass imprisonment. The War against Crime was a
>replacement for the more open repression (north and south) of the past.
>
>Formal equality was achieved for all these groups. (Undocumented residents
>are denied any pretense of formal equality and that has to be a major
>element in the left we hope is emerging. We have to achieve open borders in
>practice if not formally.)
>
>Oppression of racial minorities is no longer formal as it was but has no
>improved for large numbers of Blacks. The left is infantile while that
>remains unchallenged. But again on this list we have mere belly-aching
>unaccompanied by any though about how these goals can be embodied in
>practice. Joanna and Steve are not contributing useful thought. They are
>even contributing to the kind of analytic confusion which can interfere with
>an actual attack on the structural racism that permeates u.s. life. That
>racism is far more sophisticated than any "apartheid" structure, & to
>introduce that term is simply to confuse thought completely, hence weakening
>the struggle against racism in the u.s. We have to identify more precisely
>what we face.
>
>I find Joanna's argument incomprehensible so I won't try to comment on it
>further. I think I understand and agree with the import of Doug's snazzy
>remark below, but it is really better to say nothing at all than to shoot
>off such short and elliptic remarks. As pointless as the remarks of Steve &
>Jonna are, they are made possible by a real and agonizing state of affairs
>in the U.S., one extremely difficult to come to terms with. Flippancy
>doesn't help.
>
>Carrol
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
>On Behalf Of shag carpet bomb
>Sent: Wednesday, December 14, 2011 6:14 PM
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: [lbo-talk] Occupy the hood: A black perspective on occupy
>wallstreet
>
>many folks did think that way. just as many white middle class married
>men with young children at home think that way and don't get involved
>in direct actions that might risk arrest and confrontation with the
>cops. why work to better your child's future when you might end up in
>jail today?
>
>
>
> > Good thing the civil rights movement didn't think that way.
>
>
>
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