[Marxism] America's deep-seated racism

[Naveen Jaganathan]

Mark L. wrote:

"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.""

It is really not fair to draw Frederick Douglass into this discussion.
Douglass always emphasized the interconnectedness of women's liberation and
black liberation.  He was a founding member of the women's rights
movement with Seneca Falls conference in 1848 and worked closely with
Scanton and others (always emphasizing that women should lead the
movement).  He disputed with feminists who rejected the 14th and 15th
amendments because it did not gaurantee women's suffrage.  He never
dismissed women's rights, but argued that the White reaction that was
already setting in post-civil war had to be defeated with
legislative/constitutional alterations to protect the gains of
emancipation.  Immediately following the passage of the 15th amendment, he
runs for vice-president with the feminist Victoria Claffin Woodhull running
as president -- the first woman to run for president in the U.S. under the
Equal Rights Party.
-- 
--Naveen
"In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in
communist society, the present dominates the past." --K.Marx & F. Engels
(Communist Manifesto)