This view, however, is mistaken. The postwar activism that reached its crescendo in the South as the “civil rights movement” wasn’t a movement against a generic “racism;” it was specifically and explicitly directed toward full citizenship rights for black Americans and against the system of racial segregation that defined a specific regime of explicitly racial subordination in the South. The 1940s March on Washington Movement was also directed against specific targets, like employment discrimination in defense production. Black Power era and post-Black Power era struggles similarly focused on combating specific inequalities and pursuing specific goals like the effective exercise of voting rights and specific programs of redistribution.
^^^^ CB: This is looking like arguing with a strawperson. I am having trouble thinking of one rally or demonstration ever that was against "racism in the abstract" and not against some concrete and specific expression of white supremacy.
It is important to use "white supremacy" and not "racism", as "racism" is ambiguous such that it is applied equally to white and colored people under the Reaganite colorblind ideological regime.
^^^^
Reed:
Anti-Marx
I’ve been struck by the level of visceral and vitriolic anti-Marxism I’ve seen from this strain of defenders of antiracism as a politics...
...We’ll be back!
But this notion of democracy is inadequate, since it doesn’t begin to address the deep and deepening patterns of inequality and injustice embedded in the ostensibly “neutral” dynamics of American capitalism. What A. Philip Randolph and others—even anticommunists like Roy Wilkins—understood in the 1940s is that what racism meant was that, so long as such dynamics persisted without challenge, black people and other similarly stigmatized populations would be clustered on the bad side of the distribution of costs and benefits. To extrapolate anachronistically to the present, they would have understood that the struggle against racial health disparities, for example, has no real chance of success apart from a struggle to eliminate for-profit health care.
^^^^^ CB: Reed is struck by the anti-Marxism of some contemporary anti-racist discourse, but why doesn't he present the analysis of Marxist anti-racists from the 1940's of the relationship between race and class ? Not only will not racist disparities be ended without ending capitalism, but capitalism won't be ended without ending racial disparities. The struggle against racism is the central to working class success in the class struggles. Marxists in that earlier period made this argument in practice for example in the winning of the union at Ford Motor Company by fighting for white workers to accept Black workers into the union ( and for Black workers to join the union) But in general from the founding of the Communist Party USA, Marxists ( i.e. radicals who in no way give short shrift to the issue of class, lol) were famous in the US among Black and white people as whites who were anti-racists. This was true to the extent that most anti-racist white activists were redbaited in this period. White people who were in the _Civil Rights_ struggle ( the CR's struggle was not confined to the 1950's as Reed seems to imply earlier in the article). One can't attain the status of a "Marxist" and analyst of class with amnesia or a blindspot about the history, theory and practice of the Communist Party. The excellent extrapolation of the Marxist 40's analysis is in the form of analysis and program of the still existing CPUSA.
^^^^^ Reed: We live under a regime now that is capable simultaneously of including black people and Latinos, even celebrating that inclusion as a fulfillment of democracy, while excluding poor people without a whimper of opposition. Of course, those most visible in the excluded class are disproportionately black and Latino, and that fact gives the lie to the celebration. Or does it really? From the standpoint of a neoliberal ideal of equality, in which classification by race, gender, sexual orientation or any other recognized ascriptive status (that is, status based on what one allegedly is rather than what one does) does not impose explicit, intrinsic or necessary limitations on one’s participation and aspirations in the society, this celebration of inclusion of blacks, Latinos and others is warranted.
^^^^ CB: Reed should not accept the proposition that Black people and Latinos are now "included", because the "exclusion" of Black people and Latinos, non-poor working _and_ "middle" class (not just poor) is still disproportionate. Furthermore, whatever "inclusion" Reed is talking about is not resulting in an end to people of color's shorter life expectancies, higher morbidity rates, lower incomes and ownership of wealth, lower educational attainment ( dropping again in California and Michigan , for example, where affirmative action have been outlawed0 , lower quality and quantity of life in almost every way. This is the full statement of what gives a lie to the celebration and what constitutes the objective characteristics of white supremacy ( "racism" or institutional racism). Also, these lesser qualities and quantities of life are suffered by non-poor, "middle" class or petit bourgeois people of color. That too is part of white supremacy.
Finally, very importantly,radicals, especially white radicals, should be developing vigorously the arguments that these objective disparities between races at all levels of class are the result of _racism abstractly_ , _not_ some inherent characteristic of people of color, like "race" or "the" Black family or Black "culture"; that the history of slavery, Jim Crow and present day institutional racism in general or in the abstract are the _cause_ of the general disparities in quality and quantity of life. This argument very much still must be made, and it's the job of intellectuals like Reed to make it. Most white people today think "I'm not racist toward anybody, so it's unfair to have affirmative action for people of color." Without opposing this thinking neither racism nor capitalism can be defeated.