Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444,
retired
GED/HEO
1-12-2022
The leadership of
the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter (DSA) succumbed to the identity politics
crowd last May by cancelling Adolph Reed’s invite to speak to the NYC chapter.
Reed has been accused of not wanting to talk about race. Keeanga-Yamahtta
Taylor, a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University says
that,“Adolph Reed and his ilk believe
that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will
keep us from building a movement,”
I have not read Adolph Reed’s work extensively but I can’t imagine that his
position is that race or racism shouldn’t be talked about, the question is how
we talk about it and what we can do about it. Anyway, it’s not about alienating
white workers, it’s about dealing with social issues that unites us on a class
basis that will advance our material well-being. The US ruling class will never
advocate or even support such a strategy; racism has been too useful to them.
On the other hand, Adolph Reed argues that “An obsession with disparities of race has
colonized the thinking of left and liberal types….” “There’s this insistence that race and racism are fundamental
determinants of all Black people’s existence.” NYT
8-14-20
Adolph Reed and
Taure Reed from what I can gather, are correct in pointing out that class is subordinated
to race in the US. I also believe that identity politics undermines the struggle
of workers to combat the offensive of capitalism and the inequality, racial
disparities and misery that the free market inflicts on people.
Adolph Reeds’ son
Taure Reed makes the same points in his book, “Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism”. He writes in
his introduction to the book, “Liberals’ tendency to divorce race from
class has had dire consequences for African American and other low- skilled
workers. Specifically, race reductionism has obscured the political-economic
roots of racial disparities, resulting in policy prescriptions that could only
have limited value to poor and working-class blacks.”
In the forefront of
this identity politics offensive is the white liberal or progressive academics
among others.
The argument people
like Robin Di Angelo and others of her ilk make that white workers are not open
to discussing racism and want to avoid it completely need not be the problem it is
made out to be unless the object is to shame and guilt trip people. The problem
is that, as in all pressing issues in society, working class voices are not taken
seriously and that we do not get to discuss such issues among ourselves from
our class point of view and with the goal not of offering atonement to the
white liberal middle classes and a get out of jail card to the white racist
ruling class, but of strengthening our economic and social position within
society as a whole.
Certainly the first
place to start would be the genocidal war against the original inhabitants of
this continent.
Why did chattel
slavery arise in colonial America when it was against the laws and religious
codes of the colonial power? Why did color become the issue it did and the
concept of a white race arise-----a race that is superior to others? It is not enough to say that racism is
integral to or embedded in US society, the important question is why is it so
and how can we eliminate it.
In a recent discussion on Facebook where I raised that Malcolm X argued that it
was not possible to have capitalism without racism, a brother responded that
there was racism, certainly nationalism and Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union.
This is true, but that confirms my view that it is a social construct with a
purpose, it is not innate. The revolution in 1917 was made possible to a great
degree through policies that aimed to unite ethnic and religious minorities and
the rise of an autocratic bureaucracy was made possible in similar fashion through
the relative weakness of the Russian working class and stirring up racist,
nationalist and ant-Semitic hatred
There is no
conquering or colonial power that can rule without dividing the conquered in
some way, this includes the working class in general. In Ireland where the
population was the same color, religion played this role.
We are taught
history by the victors as the saying goes and what we are taught is white
capitalist history. History from the viewpoint of the white capitalist class. However, the present
narrative of how racism and the violent history of the US colonial settler
state should be approached, in schools or in general, is determined by the
middle and upper middle classes with a blessing from the billionaires and other
big bourgeois; the
unelected minority in society that direct social policy.
In the absence at
this time of a powerful workers’ movement, the destructive influence of this petit
bourgeois ideology is overwhelming. The US edition of the Guardian had an article earlier this week by an
Englishman that asked why white people in England can’t accept that “we” owe a huge debt for enjoying the
benefits of slavery and he sees hope in that white kids pulled down the statue
of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston. Knowing the
Guardian’s political orientation particularly here in the US, I dared to read
it. The author, Thomas Harding writes:
“In my view, white people in Britain
have a special responsibility when it comes to this legacy. After all, the vast
majority of those who transported the captured Africans to the Caribbean were
white. Similarly, the vast majority of those who “bought” these enslaved people
and made them work on the appalling sugar, cotton and coffee plantations were
white.
Harding adds with
regard to the guilt and responsibilities:
“This includes my own family, who made
money importing tobacco from American and Cuban plantations that were worked on
by enslaved people. As to the general population who gained from the enormous
wealth that poured into Britain on the back of slavery, again the vast majority
were white.”
By this measure,
everyone living here in the US, all of us, have benefited from the global
plunder that US Imperialism foists on the rest of the world. The wars,
invasions, (4 million dead Vietnamese and the destruction of Iraq) bombings, violent regime change throughout
Latin America, are all about stealing wealth and we have all benefited in some
way from it.
This “white man” is a member of one
of Britain’s long-established bourgeois families that go back to the early
period of British capitalism it seems. His family founded the famous J Lyons
and co. once the largest catering company in the world, I remember Lyons very
well. He is a relative of Lord Lawson of
Blaby who is a former Conservative Party politician who served in Margaret
Thatcher’s government.
I was not born in the
UK but I am proud of my English working-class background, and yes, I’m white
and so is Thomas Harding apparently, but he has nothing in common with me and
millions of English people except similarities in skin tone. No more than an
African American worker does with Barack Obama who lives in a $15 million home
in the Hamptons with white bourgeois and whose policies caused untold suffering to people of
color throughout the world when he was president----the position demands it and
he wanted to be there. Obama too has had to deal with racism and in a
racist society it’s worse the higher up you go. He hasn’t had to deal with it anywhere near the level the black worker has.
Harding went to
Westminster School, a school that is reserved for the British ruling class and
from there to Corpus Christi College in Cambridge. You could spend 20 years
walking the streets of English towns and come across no one who has attended
Westminster school; that is not because it has a poor reputation, it costs
somewhere in the region of $60,000 a year to go there and it is a school
reserved for those from mainly upper-class backgrounds and others who are
expected to make British capitalism a world leader in their field. He was born
in to extreme wealth and influence in a country that once colonized close to a
quarter of the world’s peoples; that’s where his wealth came from, there and
the factories and coalmines of Britain.
Now I don’t hold the sons responsible for the sins of the
fathers, and he is Jewish apparently and members of his extended family came
from Germany and I am sure some of them probably perished. He probably
experienced Anti-Semitism in the UK and at Westminster school no doubt. Any worker must
condemn this and unconditionally fight against discrimination and oppression of
all types. Bourgeois women must be defended against sexual oppression as a
black CEO must be against racism. We condemn them on a class basis, not their
color or sex, this is the issue.
Harding is a big liberal but he’s tricky like all of
them. Sure, he mentions the history of his family making money from tobacco
plantations in the Caribbean that’s no big deal for him, he’s not giving the
money back. There were whites that also worked in the Caribbean plantations,
often Irish as that was England’s first colony. Whites and blacks would run
away together so plantation owners introduced legislation to curb that practice,
the white runaway was responsible for the black. It’s obvious what the purpose
of that law was.
Harding continues: The same is true of the shipowners and
sailors, bankers and insurance officers, traders, dockworkers, shopkeepers and
countless others involved in selling the commodities back in Britain.”
He makes whiteness the center of it all. In his
list above , he includes dockworkers alongside capitalists (bankers’ commodities traders
etc.) or agents of the capitalist class. The conditions of dockworkers and
sailors in the rise of British capitalism were horrific and crews were often
people from many parts of the world. The dockworker and the banker both being
white are equally guilty. Just like the US workers of all colors and ethnic
backgrounds are as responsible for the mass murder of 4 million Vietnamese as
Henry Kissinger. That’s where this nonsense leads.
One can’t say because they played the same role because anyone
other than a liar would say otherwise. But they become equally guilty when whiteness
or color is the driving factor and the motive force behind oppression and
colonization. British capitalism entered Africa in order to satiate its hatred
of black skin. In Ireland it was a hatred of Catholicism.
Identity politics and this way of writing is conscious;
it allows the middle classes who, riddled with guilt as they can be having attained
their privileged social status through colonial plunder and exploitation of the
working classes from the black slaves in the cotton fields of the US South
to the factories of Manchester where it was processed by English workers and
their children, to atone for their sins and blame the lowly “ignorant” white worker for their
racism. They can continue to advance their class position in the capitalist
pecking order unhindered.*
Most of all, it offers the
orchestrators of the violence, the racism, the misogyny and many crimes against
humanity a get out of jail free card. Their class and the free market system,
they support and govern get off Scott free. This is the goal of identity
politics.
While Malcolm X was clear
that racism is an integral aspect of capitalism he did not specifically put
socialism forward as the alternative. But his statement makes it clear that to
end racism we have to end capitalism and only working-class unity can
accomplish that. His comments definitely put socialism on the table. His
thinking changed rapidly in his short life and he was clearly moving in that
direction as was Martin Luther King. Both of them were taken from us before
they had more time to develop these views further.
Angela Davis made it clear
also, saying that, “….. it’s a mistake to assume that we can combat racism by leaving
capitalism in place.” That’s exactly what identity politics does, leaves
capitalism in place replacing it with “whiteness”
making skin tone front and center. It’s a method that makes fighting racism
harder and the likelihood of eliminating it impossible.
As for Harding, he does not
speak for English or any other workers. His existence has been and is as
different from millions of English people and millions of workers throughout
the world. Workers do not need class enemies like him and his rotten family,
nor millionaires and Hollywood actors like Anne Hathaway to lecture us about racism.
What white workers in
particular must play a significant role in, is helping to build the independent
working-class movement in our communities and the workplaces that are more
integrated than ever. We can contribute
to a situation where we can have these discussions honestly with all the horrors
and violence that history contains but also those times when we have come
together to increase our material conditions in the face of capitalist aggression
and the divide and rule poison of racism. Under these conditions, the horrors
of three hundred years of isolation, marginalization, slavery and Jim Crow can
be discussed in a constructive way that shows a way forward. It was not the
bond laborer that created the White Race.
I think that Lerone Bennett
Jr’s comments in chapter three of his book, The
Shaping of Black America are more accurate in describing, not only human nature, but the history and rise of racism and slavery in
Colonial America than all the middle class liberal writers like Robin DiAngelo
and another one I’m only recently learning of, Anastasia Higginbothom, who are probably making lots of money writing nonsense.
Bennett wrote:
“Curiously unconcerned about their
color, these people worked together and relaxed together. They had essentially the same interests, the
same aspirations and the same grievances. They conspired together, and waged a
common struggle against their common enemy-------the big planter apparatus and
a social system that legalized terror against black and white bondsmen………….the available evidence, slight though it
is, suggests that there were widening bonds of solidarity between the first
generation of blacks and whites. And the
same evidence indicates that it proved very difficult indeed to teach white
people to worship their skin.” (My added emphasis)
We can fault the
white working class of the time for accepting the “poison bait” of white race identity and white supremacy but that’s
another time.
Understanding the real material conditions that have made our history is what
will lead to our emancipation, not the condescending racism of the liberal
identity politics crowd.
*Eric Foner’s book British
Labor and the American Civil War and the Confederacy’s efforts to get the
British Parliament to drop the cotton blockade is an interesting read on this
subject.
Other useful reading
relating to this subject.
The Invention of the White Race Vols 1 and 2.
The Many Headed Hydra
The Shaping of Black America
