Detroit Woman Speaks: Here's a Christmas Present For You

Richard Mellor Afscme Local 444, retired

Some time ago in response to something I wrote I received a message from an offended party who told me to step in to a "black woman's shoes" and then get back to her.  I am nor sure exactly what offended her but if if I were to comply with that request I'd wear this woman's shoes with pride though I don't think I could do them justice.

The situation is such that the working class in the US has not moved in to struggle in any serious way. The trade union hierarchy holds back the organized sector (They were not strong enough in the states where teachers/educators moved in to action earlier this year) and the influence of the liberals and left academics and millionaire celebrities is quite strong.  When the working class does move in to action in a serious way, and it will, people like this woman will be in the forefront. It won't be Madonna, Scarlett Johannson and Oprah Winfrey leading the fray in the women's section either. These elements will try to coopt it, to temper it, but they won't be able to. Oh how I long for that time.

I want to add this. The educated liberal middle classes (black or white) will pay lip service to her courage but beneath  the surface they will gasp at her "uncultured" speech; they really have contempt for workers no matter what their background. I appreciate and believe in cultured speech but what is the most important of all is to understand what someone is saying. The working class from all backgrounds has beautiful language and phrases and sayings. What is important is the truth is said and when the anger and healthy class hatred of the working class is expressed, it is powerful and beautiful at the same time. Martin Luther King talked of riots being the language of the unheard, well, when workers who have little social power as individuals speak out, there is righteous anger in it. When that anger become generalized and organized, then the door to emancipation is opened.

In England where I grew up, the middle classes, that layer between the ruling elite, (the big bourgeois) and the workers has nothing but contempt for working class language. It is how they bully us, tell us apart, justify their dominance. The Irish were perpetually ridiculed for their "bad" English. Of course, English was not their language, they were forbidden to speak their own language under colonial rule, and when you add religious, racial, gender or color to it, it is all part of class dominance.

People will often talk of the class and culture of the Obama's and it is true, they have this. But I always remind people how British colonialism went around the world and stole everything that wasn't nailed down. They did it in the most violent way and they did it with the right grammar.  Don't be fooled by the phony manners of the ruling class.