[Marxism] America's deep-seated racism

[Mark Lause]

The abolitionist movement has much to teach us on this subject, and much
else. Periodically, the subject came up as to whether blacks or Indians were
more abused--or whether reforming the condition of blacks or women should
have priority.  This is sort of an intellectual version of pitting the
oppressed against each other.  Almost invarably, both sides bring different
measures to the table, and each winds up counting apples and oranges.

The worst aspect of such discussions lead towards a conclusion saying that
one or another should be emphasized and the other ignored.  Radicals who
sought to place the issue of Indians before the public, though abolitionists
themselves, were told that they were distracting from the focus on slavery.
Suffragists were told to wait another generation, because it was, to use
Frederick Douglass' term, "the Negro's hour."

One of the leading abolitionists involved in organizing for Indian rights,
John Beeson rightly pointed out that the issue of race went beyond
slavery...that any attempt to address it effectively had to involve both
blacks and Indians...and that any progress in one area should be helpful in
the other.

The demand for woman suffrage came from--and remained most intense--among
abolitionist women.  Their getting the ballot right after the Civil War,
which was quite possible, would have made the betrayal of blacks and the
Southern people generally in the end of the Reconstruction far more
difficult.

Comparisons of race and class fall in the same category.

There is no such thing as a class conscious approach that does not address
the question of race.  By definition, such an approach isn't class conscious
and always boils down to some variation of enshrining privileges for some to
the detriment of the class in general.

The time might have been when it sounded particularly angry or radical to
say that race and racism trumps class, but, in America at this time, it's
really taking coals to Newcastle.  Talking race without class has become a
major industry.  It's become a major industry.  Univesities, companies,
governments, television of all sorts, etc. have all helped instituionalize
it.

As a result of this--delibeately so, to a great extent--it drowns out the
kind of honest discussion on race and racism that took place a generation
ago--by Malcolm X, the Panthers, even King--which almost always included a
class dimnsion.

These things are so closely interwoven that it's folly to talk of separating
them.

Solidarity!
Mark L.