According to reports in the press, the conciliation meeting between the black and white residents of Paris Texas last month "didn't go so well". Black residents talked of the discrimination they face daily in Paris: "When you go in the schools and see mostly black kids sitting in detention—it's racism. In court, we get high bonds, we get longer sentences. If that's not racism, what is it?"
Another speaker, a pastor at a local black church spoke of the monument honoring fallen Confederate soldiers on the front lawn of the country courthouse. Creola Cotton whose daughter received a seven-year term in a youth prison for shoving a hall monitor described her anger, especially as three months earlier the same judge had sentenced a 14-year-old white girl to probation for arson. The girl received an early release after the case ignited national protests. Jacqueline McClelland spoke of the murder of her son Brandon who was tied to a pickup and dragged along until there was little left of him. Two white men have been charged with his murder.
As the blacks described how they felt, “Their white listeners mostly glared back with their arms crossed.”, reports the Chicago Tribune. (1). Now I wasn’t there and everyone in the room might have been a stone cold ideological racist. But I figure it’s more like at work. Racism was not a subject that people discussed very often because the blacks got mad and the whites got defensive. I know a white kid here who was the only white kid in his class. He was not in any way a racist but really felt uncomfortable during Black History Month.
The problem with it was that he always felt like he was being blamed for what happened in slavery and for the racism that exists in society. He was completely sympathetic to the brutal history of racism against people of color here in the US, especially black folks, as he understood that we live in a racist and sexist society, but the guilt trip was not acceptable to him. It is not acceptable to most white workers either.
I used to explain to him that the reason for this is that there is no class analysis of this history. They can’t teach us that a certain class applied racism as a method. Obviously, the white factory workers or the poor whites in the south were not the same as the slave owners. Every month is white history month, but it is white capitalist history that dominates; the history of the working class in general is hidden. This doesn’t mean that having white skin hasn’t meant privilege for workers in comparison to people of color but that is a conscious effort on the part of the ruling class to divide workers as well as the failure of worker’s leaders throughout history to counter it.
There is a very powerful tendency for human beings on the same economic rung of society, facing the same hardships; in short, of the same class, to be drawn toward each other, to unite in resistance to the oppression they face. This has occurred throughout the history in the US and the world. Blacks, united with Irish poor, led many revolts and uprisings in the 17th and 18th century in the US. In the New York Conspiracy of 1741, an Irishman named Quack, referred to by Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker as a “revolutionary arsonist” set fire to Fort George in New York City. It was the “greatest fortification in all of British America” (2) For weeks fires were set in the city. Two of the leaders of this rebellion, John Gwin, a former slave and Negro Peg, his Irish lover were hung and hundreds were rounded up hanged or deported. Radical preachers who called on people to rise up against oppression were targeted.
In response to the solidarity that existed among the poorest of the poor, the mercantile ruling classes introduced measures that criminalized white black cooperation. One called for “diligent enquiry into the economy and behavior of all the mean ale houses and tipling house within this city.” Of particular interest were the taverns where“negroes and the scum and dregs of white people” enjoyed their free time together. Along with these divisive measures they launched an ideological war in order to break the bonds between white and black. “They endeavored to teach racial lessons to New York’s people of European descent, promoting a white identity that would transcend and unify the city’s fractious ethnic divisions.” (3) Like the Jim Crow laws of the southern states, racism is a conscious strategy to divide and rule and divert the powerful tendency for class unity in to ethnic division or religious sectarianism. . In Ireland, the occupiers used religion. This strategy has had great success due to the leaders of the worker’s organizations
Things have only changed today to the extent that they have due to the struggles of specially oppressed minorities against this inequality and the integration of workplaces. The ruling class will always use racism as a weapon to divide its class enemy; racism is not a personal problem it is a social one.
Look at the situation today. I was at a huge public hospital a few weeks ago visiting a sick friend. The place is amazing, like the DMV in some ways except the frustration on people's faces is a thousand times worse and accompanied by pain, sorrow and anger. And there were a lot of sick people about. My friend had an appointment made for him in a few weeks and was told by the nurse to make sure he comes in at 10.am for the 1.00 O’clock appointment and he should be one of the first seen? should health care be like this in a civilized society? I looked around me and almost everyone was black, or generally dark skinned. There were few white people, although I am sure this will change as the present crisis deepens. Look at the incarceration rate in the US. Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation’s 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006 yet they are only13% of the population. Are they more prone to criminal behavior?
The death penalty remains an example of the extreme inequality in the U.S. justice system. In 2000, governor George Ryan off Illinois imposed a moratorium on the death penalty citing concerns over the fact that more death row inmates had been exonerated than executed since Illinois reinstated it in 1977. When Governor Ryan made his decision, 62 percent of those on death row were black, in a state with a black population of 15 percent. Of the 18 persons who had been exonerated from Illinois' death row as of February 2007, 12 were black. If we don’t accept that there is a problem in these statistics, a social problem, then one of the only alternatives left is to draw racial conclusions. This is what those that rule society want us to think; it’s their fault. What if Jews or Catholics were substituted for blacks? There would be an outcry.
That’s why the tension and division in that meeting in Paris Texas couldn’t be breached. Leading the meeting according to reports, were, “two conciliation specialists from the U.S. Department of Justice”. Like the “official” respected historians of capitalism, these people represent the interests of the ruling class and they have no interest in ridding society of racism; they are a minority in this society and they need it.
For the whites in that meeting, leaderless, and with no force explaining racism in this way, they see no alternative but to keep quiet and side with the white authorities. In fact, the judge who sentenced the young black girl above to seven years was in the room, shaking his head in disgust that the black folks would even suggest that justice was color blind:
"I think the black community in this town is suffering a great deal from poverty, broken homes, drugs," he said. "Because a larger percentage of the black population is caught up in that, in their anguish they are perceiving they are the victims of discrimination. But white people are not the enemy. Poverty, illiteracy, drugs, absentee fathers—that's the enemy. That's not racism. That's the breakdown of a community." (4) And what causes poverty, crime and drugs I might ask?
Now here was the real guilty party speaking. He has no time for black workers and no time for white ones; but he’ll use them as pawns in the game as the Bob Dylan song goes. Imagine how the mood would have changed had a couple of white people stood up and first addressed their black brothers and sisters. They first condemned the racism of the authorities and the racism of individuals like the murderers of the young man tied dragged behind a truck ten years ago. They condemned the rotten racist history of the country and accepted that that the fears and feelings of the black residents were valid. This is something that is the responsibility of white workers to do. This is simply saying to our black brothers and sisters, “yes, you are right about what you see and what you say”. It is not the whining, guilt-ridden condescension of the white liberals; it is merely a public recognition of what was and what is. Every black person understands a white bus driver is different to Donald Trump or George Bush; we just have to make sure we aren't fooled in to thinking we’re the same as them or that our interests are best served by such thinking. Our interests lie in unity with all workers and opposition to racism and the system that perpetuates it----capitalism.
And what next? To turn and point at the culprit and the upholder of the racist laws of the land at the back of the room and the so-called “conciliation specialists” and lay the blame where it belongs. Throughout history they have used us in this way in order to keep their privileges and the higher up you go the worse they are. Condemn racism, attack its source, and explain its purpose. This would have transformed that meeting and opened up the real possibility of unity along class lines. This responsibility falls on the shoulders of white workers as the ruling class is white and we have to solidly and openly declare our hostility to them and our allegiance with workers of color. The same goes for gender discrimination.
We should also remember the words of Malcom X who said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.”
(1) Race In America, Chicago Tribune: 1-30-09
(2) The Many Headed Hydra: P 174
(3) Ibid: P207
(4) Chicago Tribune: 1-30-09
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