On 9/28/2011 9:44 AM, Doug Henwood wrote:
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> On Sep 28, 2011, at 10:09 AM, // ravi wrote:
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>> For we know as a fact that racism is a term and concept that people find politically useful. Using the concept, they describe the problem with clarity, they organise under a banner, they define means to identify/measure the problem, and at times even solve it. Reed is in fact aware of this, for he acknowledges (IIRC) that “antiracism” was one of the pillars of the civil rights movement
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> Exactly not. The civil rights movement was about repealing Jim Crow laws and achieving voting and other civil rights for black Americans. It had very specific targets. The whole "antiracism" thing came later, after those things were achieved.
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> Adolph has written this many times, I've quoted it many times, I've had him say it in interviews many times - yet people just can't hear it. What's the problem?
If he has written it, then he has been spitting on the graves of Malcolm, of King, Stokely Carmichael, of the murdered Fred Hampton and Mark Clark (and other Panthers), of the recently murdered Troy Davis, and of the millions of lives that are still be snuffed out by the continuing racism at the core of u.s. culture.
Carrol
^^^^^ CB: Yes, and there is a certain ignorance of the history of the struggle against white supremacy which the Civil Rights movement of the 50's and 60's grew out of. The NAACP had a general anti-racist, not narrow "Civil rights/anti-Jim Crow" aim. The Negro freedom or liberation movement W.E.B. Dubois' program , as sort of leading organic intellectual of the Negro People, was all around anti-white supremacist. Negro leaders in the labor movement, such as fought for equality in jobs North and South UAW radicals proposed "superseniority" , a form of affirmative action, for Negro auto workers in the late 40's. Negroes in Congress such as Adam Powell and Charles Diggs fought general anti-racist struggles. And more. The "Civil Rights" leaders of the fifties and sixties were out of this tradition.
This statement is off: " The whole "antiracism" thing came later, after those things were achieved."