BLACK HISTORY MONTH/WHITE HISTORY MONTH

At the beginning of the month I  posted a piece about Black History I had written some time ago at work, after a few discussions with some of my co-workers. I distributed it in the lunch room and other places in the company where I had some contacts. In my own yard, a white worker asked me about white history month. He did it with good intention to provoke further argument, I knew him well. He was a good union guy. So I wrote and distributed the piece I am posting here. I have made a couple of minor changes and I suppose if I took some time to revisit both the pieces I might change much but it'll do for now.

 

Rev. Martin Luther King delivers his last speech at a union rally in Memphis in April 1968 Source

 

 

Richard

South Area Corporation Yard

2001

In response to my previous piece on Black History month a co- worker writes to me the question:  "When is White History Month?   My immediate answer to this co-worker was, "every month is white history month."  In fact every month since the foundation of the modern state of America has been white history month.

However, this co-worker raises an important question.  Clearly in any society, it is the ruling class that writes the history books.  In the case of the U.S., the ruling class has been male and white, and overwhelmingly Protestant.  So yes, white history has dominated the history books, but which whites?  The history of which sector of the white population?

How many of us know of the white workers that were shot by Rockefeller's goons at Ludlow? Thrown out of their company homes and forced in to a tent city then attacked.  What of the 1877 uprising?  The shooting of workers at the still existing River Rouge plant or in Minneapolis during the general strike there. The Seattle or San Francisco general strikes where workers were brutalized and murdered by police.  It is no accident that here in Oakland one can graduate the public school system and be completely unaware of the 1946 general strike. Why is the great 44-day Flint occupation not Labor's 4th of July? The point that has to be understood is that white working class history is also hidden from us.  Labor history in general is hidden from us.

What we've had is four hundred years of the history of white "capitalism" white capitalist history.  The emergence of Black History Month is a direct result of the dominance of this white capitalist history and as a concession to the civil rights movement.  In the main, Black History Month will steer clear of the militant history of the black working class and those black leaders like Malcolm X who criticized the system itself as opposed to whites in general. Unable to avoid individuals like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, their ideas are sanitized and an almost carnival atmosphere surrounds them.  Streets and schools are named after them and careful attention is paid to keeping any class analysis they made a well-kept secret. 

Malcolm X said toward the end of his life that:

"I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those that want freedom justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.  I believe that there will be that kind of clash, but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin, as Elijah Muhammad had taught it."

and

...You can't operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else's blood to suck to be a capitalist.  You show me a capitalist, I'll show you a bloodsucker."

Agree with this or not.  It is quite clear that the white capitalist class would much rather Malcolm X have continued his onslaught against the whites in general which includes this writer and all white workers, than what he was saying above. I can state from experience that I became much more open to reading Malcolm X’s writings and writings about him, during this period than when he was telling me I was a murderer and a devil. Statements like these also threaten the black capitalist class who have benefited from the doors that were forced open during the civil rights movement.  They are not concerned with eliminating the social causes of racism, just that part of it that prevents them from getting rich and exploiting working people like their white counterparts.

As white workers we have to recognize the complete denial of black history that has occurred in this country up until the civil rights movement.  U.S. history has been full of successful individuals, teachers, inventors, leaders of the state, all with white faces.  In order to maintain their privileges the white capitalist class had to make concessions to the white worker, particularly the white male worker. The role of other minorities and women, including white women, had been ignored.

Tragically, the capitalist class, that injects racism in to society as a means of dividing workers, have been very successful at it in this country to the detriment of all workers white, black or otherwise.  Much of the responsibility for their success must fall on the shoulders of the leaders of the labor movement who have failed historically to combat racism effectively and actually supported it in the trade unions.  Too often, racial minorities have been left alone to fight the forces of the state.

But once we accept this, the white worker that is.  What then?  Unlike the white liberal middle class, that is driven by guilt and self-hatred, most white workers recognize that our history is one of hard work, sacrifice and more often than not, poverty. Plus, in the last 25 years, white workers have come under increased attack also. The American Dream, which was an option for so many of us, has either been destroyed or is out of reach. Most people on welfare, and the majority of poor people in this country are white. And unlike the white liberals the white worker is not open to the guilt attacks that dominate the arsenals of the black and white middle class.  We are not responsible for what people that have the same skin color as us have done or continue to do. 

What we are responsible for is to recognize the fact that white skin has had its privileges, that this privilege has been used to attack non-white workers in the most vicious and brutal way.  White workers have suffered as workers, but for non-whites, there is a double whammy, they have been victimized as workers and on the basis of their color or race. But we all have to recognize that there has been a conscious and very successful attempt to portray the U.S. as a society without classes, that the issue is solely one of race. It would be a mistake also to approach the problem as if it was solely a matter of class. But it is the history of the working class in general that has been obscured and downright hidden.

As I walk past schools in my communities I see banners or signs announcing Black History Month, Pride, Hispanic Month (the term Latino is not used in “official” circles), or Asian Pacific Islander Month etc. and there’s a danger we will run out of months, yet the vast majority of these groups and indeed, the vast majority of us in the US are working class. But this is not a fashionable term by any means. It’s a term that tends to unity in a way that gender and race, or color do not.

Despite the success of racism in this country there have been many times when workers overcame it. The importance of discovering working class history and the history of the labor movement is that whenever workers transcended racial lines it was the employers, that stirred up racial antagonism particularly through the police and newspapers (the media) that they control.

During the Merryville strike against the lumber companies in Louisiana in 1912 to use one example, workers showed solidarity against all odds and provocation by the employers. Some white workers had been fired for testifying against the brutality of the employers in a recent murder trial.  The Union, the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, struck the lumber company.  Scabs, mostly Blacks and Mexicans were imported to break the strike, but refused to do so when appeals were made to them by the strikers.  Eventually this strike was broken by employer violence and deportations of both white and black workers.

Philip Foner comments in his History of the Labor Movement Vol. 4 that:

"The fact that the Union had allowed Negro and white members to meet and consult together in complete violation of the "traditions of the South" was cited as sufficient reason to seek its destruction."

As white workers we have to accept that historically the above was the exception rather than the rule. The lesson learned should be that racism is promoted and encouraged in all sorts of different ways in order to weaken the unity of working class people.  And most importantly, while we shouldn't feel responsible as individuals for events of the past, and while as individuals we may feel that a non-white worker is our equal, historically the white working class has not risen to the occasion when our brothers and sisters in the Black, Latino, Chinese and other minority communities have been attacked. 

It is easier for the state to kill these people and get away with it. It is easier for the state to send troops and occupy the black communities and get away with it.  The fact that Blacks were hung in this country in this writer’s lifetime for exercising the right to vote with very limited active protest from the heads of organized labor speaks volumes.  Some people have a reason for being a little cautious.