[...]
Julio, your posts on this subject are so thoughtful and clearly written that I can't resist the urge to engage with them, even if this one was directed at Doug.
> This is a clear manifestation of racial oppression, because it is an
> easy to document fact that Black people are suffering from this
> disproportionately.
[...]
> 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.
But this isn't racism. Blacks clearly suffer from it disproportionately, of course, so if that's how you choose to define racial oppression, then fine, it's racism. But the term just confuses the problem. As you say yourself, the parents leaving the public schools aren't doing so with the purpose of upholding some racial hierarchy. And while a tiny number of intellectuals might be able to sustain a conception of "racism" as an inanimate, abstract, totally non-intentional structure, for 99.9% of the population -- black and white -- using the word racism will automatically and powerfully call to mind the idea of a scheme organized by whites to intentionally repress blacks because of their skin color, which just is *not* what is happening here.
You're absolutely right, though, to say that this *feels* like racial oppression.
As you put it so rightly and vividly, they "feel it on their skin." You write:
> 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.
But this is where I think you go wrong. If it *appears* like racism, you seem to say, then "we" should mechanically go along, as if appearance = reality. It's futile and counterproductive, you say, to try to challenge people's commonsense understanding of the world. Accept and go along with the commonsense understanding.
But that's so wrong. The spontaneous ideas of the masses aren't automatically right. Coming from an ardent Marxist like you, it's surprising to hear these ideas. You've read plenty of Marx. He ruthlessly dissects what he sees as the theoretical errors and dead-ends of various movements and factions -- not just of fellow intellectuals but of people struggling. And he does it in much harsher language than Doug or Adolph Reed have ever done. (Read his and Engels' scathing attacks on the "idiocies" of the American Greenbackers and Populists -- real living popular movements, about which I happen to think M&E were wrong.)
Okay, let's say a bunch of working class people struggling to make ends meet -- of whatever race -- blame their problems on taxes, bureaucrats and welfare. To them it seems like simple common sense, and their logic seems impeccable: They really don't have enough money. The government really is taking their money. And the money is really being used to fund bureaucrats and welfare (though not in the proportions they may think.) They "feel it on their skin."
Normally people like us would say our role is to show these people why their perceptions of reality, their perceptions of the nature of their predicament -- however intuitively compelling on the surface -- are *wrong*. (Yes, they pay taxes, but the taxes fund benefits they need; the military takes a lot more money than welfare; the lowness of their wages is a bigger problem than the highness of their taxes. And on and on and on.)
You wouldn't hesitate for a moment to tell such people: you're mistaken; try to look at the world in a different way. So why is your attitude so different when it comes to people's mistaken perception that their problems are being imposed on them because of the color of their skin?
> 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?
Again, you're explaining *why* people think a certain way, but you're not demonstrating that it's right. I don't even understand how it's *possible* that the fight against Bloomberg's schools policies could be helped by some of the fighters deliberately "distancing themselves from potentially supportive whites"? And the dynamics you describe absolutely sound like they involve distancing from potentially supportive whites (and others). It's almost like you're explaining why your argument doesn't work, then declaring that it works. I'm honestly baffled -- and it's precisely your lucidity that makes it baffling to me.
SA