> I don't see how anything I've said - or Adolph, whom I mostly
> channelling - would suggest abandoning anything.
I don't know Adolph, but -- IIUC -- you are denying that people suffering from racial oppression (1) can fight against racial oppression directly or (2), if they can fight it directly, then it is not politically wise or effective to do so. As far as I understand you, you are not denying that racial oppression exist. You are just doing one or both of the above.
The reasons you give appear to be that it is impossible (or perhaps too costly) for people to identify what/whom to specifically confront when they suffer racial oppression directly (what's their address?). And/or, if they can identify the what/whom to confront, confronting them directly "adds nothing" to (presumably subtracts from) their fight.
I disagree with both. And if these are not your views, then -- as far as I'm concerned -- our disagreement vanishes or is a different disagreement.
The what/whom are not impossible or hard to identify. The term "racism" (or others like it) didn't begin as a product of a particularly inventive mind, searching for a nonexistent social reality to designate. On the contrary. People suffer a type of oppression and then they search for a term or terms to designate it. Racial oppression exists before people has a term readymade for it. The term is widely used, because it still has a lot of descriptive power, because racism (or what we designate with that or similar terms) exists. If it exists, then its manifestations can be identified. If its manifestations can be identified, then its causes can be as well. It is not impossible. Yes, identifying the ultimate causes and specific mechanisms may be costly. People have to spend time and effort figuring things out, and it is true that those who suffer it may be hard pressed to identify its ultimate sources. In fact, the way people learn to identify and uproot the ultimate sources starts always by confronting first the superficial manifestations, which in the case of racial oppression are not terribly hard to spot.
I'll give you a very concrete example in *our* neighborhood, which is an African-American neighborhood in its way to gentrification: Some parents are taking their kids out of public schools and sending them to charter schools, because (1) parents want their best possible education for their kids and (2) they think that regular public schools can't provide it. They may not blame the teachers or the staff at these schools. It may be that these schools are being given a bad hand in terms of resources vs. demands. Whatever -- some parents don't want their kids to pay for the challenges these schools face. E.g. regular public schools cannot select the children they admit. They take whoever applies. And, in our neighborhood, this includes children of parents who are not available or, if available, don't have decent/stable incomes, a higher education, etc. Charters schools cull the "most advanced" kids, snatching them from regular public schools, which makes it less likely for these schools to meet the standards the City imposes on them, given the shrinking resources they receive.
Parents at PS11 can see this pattern: A large chunk of the kids not attending to regular public schools or switched away from them are Whites or less Black, disproportionately so. A totally visible fact. They are also relatively richer, more educated, more resourceful, etc.
A few of them know the system, can pay a good lawyer, sue the City, and further reduce the pool of resources available to public schools. The department of education is terrible at defending that pool of money. I know, because my wife (who is not a lawyer) has been sent to court by the department of education to defend a public school against parents with pretty savvy lawyers. Thus, parents (and teachers and staffers) at public schools feel -- for good reason -- that the parents who are moving their kids out are "racist" or behaving as "racists." One way or another, this appears to them as racial oppression. Good luck trying to persuading them that it is capitalism or markets or what have you.
They do not necessarily see that this is a divide et impera move by the City to pull the financial rug under regular public schools and, ultimately, from public education as a whole. In fact, most parents (Blacks, Whites, etc.) may wind up suffering if the City's move succeeds, because it is intended to undermine public education as a whole and pushing towards a privatization or segregation of schools. They don't see all children suffering equally as a result of the dismantling of public education. And, on the other end, some parents feel relieved that their kids are getting into these charter and "more advanced" schools, escaping the black hole of public education decay.
This is a clear manifestation of racial oppression, because it is an easy to document fact that Black people are suffering from this disproportionately. It is racial oppression mingled with (as everything in social life is mingled with everything else) economic exploitation, etc. It's racial oppression used to disguise economic exploitation. But the disguise is real. In fact, Michael Galinsky is working on a documentary project to expose this type of racial oppression. Neither Michael is asking for my advice, nor do I feel to be much of an authority in documentary making, but if I were Michael's personal adviser, I'd tell him to thread carefully and train his shots against the City and those who rule in it.
I am hoping he doesn't come across as too heavy handed on the parents who are taking their kids to the "advanced" schools. One, we are all touchy, and we need to fight this together. And it seems that we can, if we manage our differences well. But focusing on this is not necessarily a bad idea. The fact is that, if we leave aside the psychological makeup of individuals and call things by their names, then there is -- effectively -- an element of *racism* on the part of those parents who are taking their kids out. This is not to get sanctimonious about people who are just doing what they can under difficult circumstances. I don't even think that this element of racism is conscious or fully conscious. All I'm trying to do is pinpoint the genial perversity embedded in these social structures: they turn us into weapons of mutual -- if not self -- destruction! They make us racists, objectively!
Doesn't this sound excessive? Well, change the word if that makes you feel better, but please do not discard the reality that it is intending to describe. More importantly, IMO, it's how we deal with it. As Mao would say, there is antagonism between the workers and the proletariat or between an oppressed nation and imperialism, but the contradictions between peasants and urban workers are "contradictions among the people." We have to handle them differently. IMO, we shouldn't attack the parents that are just trying to do the best they can for their kids.
Who can blame anybody for trying to find an individual solution to their collective problems when basic structures of resistance are nonexistent? Most of the parents who don't register their kids at a charter school simply can't. If we want the parents who can, to keep them in, then we need to provide these parents with structures that make their choice of resisting easier, more viable, less risky for their kids. Well, yes, but that's chicken-and-egg. Somebody has to build these structures, chances have to be taken, and that's why the parents who stay may feel resentful that the burden of building these structures is falling on them or -- more precisely -- on their kids. Clearly, by definition of a charter school (and in spite of what that trader told the BBC about everybody being able to make money in a recession, a contradiction if we can see one), not every kid can join one of them.
So, how do we confront racism, the structures of racism (customs, laws, policies, economic conditions, urban infrastructure, etc.) and the people who embody them (some of whom are the victims themselves)? As a old Mexican Marxist used to say, the class struggle goes right through each of our hearts. Clearly, the answer is: it depends. But confront them we must, or else we are giving up. What I'm suggesting is to have a very differentiated approach to the different constituencies involved: the City high authorities the principals, teachers, staffers, and the parents at the charter and non-charter schools. I don't feel we need soft gloves to attack Bloomberg, but we do need to be careful in addressing the parents who are taking their kids out of our public schools.
Now, you are not denying that racism exists. Instead, you seem to be saying that, while racism may exist, people should fight economic exploitation, because acknowledging racial oppression and fighting it as such "does not add anything" to their struggle. So, I'm sure you see the *racism* involved in the situation I describe above. You seem to be saying, don't call that racism, because it is only going to backfire and weaken further the parents of the kids that stay in those non-charter schools. But I don't think you can prevent people, e.g. the parents at public schools, from reacting against the manifestations of racism they feel on their skin and that of their children. You can try and help them see the deeper causes, but you can't keep those people from reacting against that *racism*, confronting it personally even, perhaps with what appears to you as a failing political strategy -- i.e. alienating themselves from a group of White parents who are amongst the most progressive and sympathetic to their plight.
One may say that, when Blacks (or other non-Whites) gang together and distance themselves from potentially supportive Whites, they are harming themselves more than they are helping themselves. But I am not so sure. I think of this in terms of political risk. They know that, to some extent, they can rely on keen. They've done and it worked somehow. They know each other better. Trusting one another has been their survival strategy so far, and -- at least -- they've survived. So why trust an outsider when so much is at stake? Their instinct is to strengthen their crowd first. They feel they may be losing something by not reaching out outside of their crowd, but they are willing to pay the price, because they better be safe than sorry. Who can blame them? Outsiders (e.g. Whites) have been ruthless on them, historically speaking. Now, from a position of a strengthened collective, they may be ready to engage with the rest of the world. Their hanging tough together (e.g. supporting Obama when others stop doing so) can freak out White individuals willing to support their struggle against racial oppression.
> How are these examples even relevant? You fight the
> colonizer (who isn't colonizing you because of your "race"
> - that's a story he typically makes up after the fact - but
> because he wants your land, labor, and resources). You
> fight the immigration cops because no human should be
> illegal. What does adding race to this accomplish?
You seem to be stuck in what goes on in the mind of the colonizer (e.g. analogous to your concern about Occupy Wall Street being able to scare the hell out of Blankfein). But, politically, *by far*, the most relevant matter is what goes on in the mind of the colonized. It's going to be *their* struggle or there is no struggle. Ask the Vietnamese -- why do they think that the people of Vietnam resisted and kicked the Americans out of their country and reunified it? It wasn't because they were fighting against the plunder of their resources or to abolish economic exploitation. They were fighting foreign invaders -- people who, mostly, didn't look or speak or lead their lives like them. It was a national and racial fight. In the rawest sense -- the term "nation" has a Latin root that means "birth," nation is the condition of your birth, your blood, your keen, your breed, i.e. your "race." They were not mainly protecting tropical forests, oil, coal, uranium, let alone markets, or their labor power from being exploited, but their birth condition, their blood, their most immediate culture, their language, their race.
In fact, if the Vietnamese had followed your advice, you would not have added anything to their struggle. You would have subtracted from it! Because if, for you, the condition to join the good fight was to prevent the plunder of natural resources or the conquest of markets or capitalist exploitation, then you would have reduced the mass of fighters to a much smaller subset than otherwise.
How do Cubans frame their struggle? Yes, they may frame it as a struggle for socialism. But that is, because, over time, the communists have persuaded a lot of people that the existence of socialism (or, more precisely, the fight to transition towards it) is indispensable for the survival of Cuba as a viable nation. When push comes to shove, when they want to broaden their appeal, they claim that the main task of the revolution was national rescue and that their current struggle is mainly a matter of national preservation. Martí and Maceo take the front seat, pushing Marx and Lenin to the back.
> What does race even mean in this context? (Hispanics, as
> the U.S. government statisticians always say, may be of any
> race.) How is an Argentine of Italian extraction the same
> "race" as a Mexican? A Mexican with a lot of Indian blood the
> same "race" as Carlos Salinas?
As Charles just wrote, the Marxist analysis of race draws from the Marxist analysis of the national question. The successful role that the CP of the US played in the struggle for civil rights resulted from their struggle and attitude towards the movement being informed by this analysis. People ignore it at their own risk.
I don't think I am entirely confused about the categories of race, ethnicity, and nationality. But for the purposes of this discussion, we don't really need to draw the sharpest distinctions. The overlapping is large. The case of Salinas is particularly interesting, but I have written too much already. So I'll stop here.
Finally, as a reward to those who read all this, a twin plug:
- The URPE conference, the War on the Working Class, will be held on Saturday at St. Francis College, in Brooklyn. More info, here: http://urpe.org/conf/brooklyn/brookprog.html
- Science & Society, the journal where some of the *best* Marxist analyses of the national and race questions were first published, is celebrating its 75th anniversary of continuous publication on Friday, October 14. In the evening. You are all invited to this celebration, where we'll be honoring authors and having fun. More info, here: http://scienceandsociety.com/invitation.html
S&S old issues are all on JSTOR. I can't edit, so I reserve my right to take some or all of my words back.