Dean
13th February 2010, 21:21
The Question:
How would you compare the different approaches to race embraced by Washington and DuBois with the current approach to race between civil rights activists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and others such as Barrack Obama?
My Response:
Every resistence movement by oppressed people have had numerous manifestations within itself: for one, there is the passive, dovish movement which upholds an assimilationist, conservative solution, and a direct, materialist movement which not only recognizes the economic and political manifestation of oppression, but actively seeks to undermine, and ultimately reorganize society in an egalitarian, just manner.
DuBois and Washington were part of the former movement, that is the indirect, dovish one (admittedly, DuBois had a much more materialist, though still woefully conservative stance on Black liberation). It is only characters such as Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Nelson Mandela who had direct, liberation-oriented programs.
While I can only mildly fault Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for their political stances, it is their focus as expressed in mass media which defines their character toward the public, and again, this is as much a fault as the narrow, pro-centrist media, but they have shifted their focus from black economic determinism toward rhetorical values.
There are few better examples of the failure of Black assimilation and black liberalism than the continuation of S. African Apartheid. While political freedoms have been gained, Mandela's crass political posturing led to a reformist, liberal regime which insured the continuation of white hegemony over the black population of S. Africa. There are still two economies, one black, one white, and there are private militias which use extra-judicial killings and torture to maintain these property relations. The following is a very good article detailing the self-destructive liberalism of the African National Congress, and the prevalence of the same kind of economic relations as were manifested during direct, political apartheid:
AJE: Many Still Poor in South Africa (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/02/201021254435781291.html)
Today, we have a massive swelling of black and white ghettos alike. The ruling class is keen to maintain the apparent racial divisions in order to divide the working class, to make us think that blacks, whites and hispanics are each fighting for the same, mutually exclusive aims. We are not. We are in the same boat. Poor whites feel that their own losses are a result of hispanics working in this nation, and black people drawing too much welfare. This is what I've seen expressed in the mass, conservative media and among many of those whites I know. To put it bluntly, welfare is a near-negligible expense for our centrist state spending structure, and the presence of hispanics in the work force - who manage to wrest a small percentage GDP from their employers - is nowhere near as impressive as the incredibly powerful credit system (in addition to the centralizing corporate system) which has managed to maintain a permanent structure of indentured servitude for the vast majority of the American public.
Obama has maintained a remarkably similar class character to previous presidents: he follows a trend of deregulation, heightened taxes on the working class, pro-insurance firm legislation, and more vast increases in corporate welfare, in addition to the endorsement of vast layoffs of our public employee base. He expressed marginally liberation-oriented language, yet expanded the wars on ethnic 'enemies' of the US nationalist paradigm - domestically and abroad - and has done nothing for the vast number of black americans, who endorsed him explicitly with the expectation that Obama, as a black man who has expressed mild liberation stances, would provide for their interests at least to some degree.
Black liberation seems to have died in the United States. As sad as it seems, I believe that the only real change to this will occur when the whole system of credit and consumption inevitably fails, and we return to a production-oriented economy with vast reserves of newly-destitute and impoverished Americans. I have every hope for the human race to create and re-create itself in an increasingly productive manner, but this never comes at the behest of the conservative state-of-things, but rather with each proceeding antagonism against these stagnant structures.
Simply put, blacks will not be free in the US until they are free alongside whites, hispanics and all other ethnic minorities, in addition to having an equally potent share and control of the economic structure of society. Anything short of this doctrine will result in the sick liberalism seen in the likes of the failed South African National Congress, and subsequently a direct return and endorsement of the economic structure which enslaved the oppressed people in the first place.
Just hoping to got more responses (or a response at all!) here on RevLeft. As a side note, are Uni discussion just as bland wehre you are - almost everyone just ignores you when you talk about the material structure of society?
How would you compare the different approaches to race embraced by Washington and DuBois with the current approach to race between civil rights activists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and others such as Barrack Obama?
My Response:
Every resistence movement by oppressed people have had numerous manifestations within itself: for one, there is the passive, dovish movement which upholds an assimilationist, conservative solution, and a direct, materialist movement which not only recognizes the economic and political manifestation of oppression, but actively seeks to undermine, and ultimately reorganize society in an egalitarian, just manner.
DuBois and Washington were part of the former movement, that is the indirect, dovish one (admittedly, DuBois had a much more materialist, though still woefully conservative stance on Black liberation). It is only characters such as Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey and Nelson Mandela who had direct, liberation-oriented programs.
While I can only mildly fault Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson for their political stances, it is their focus as expressed in mass media which defines their character toward the public, and again, this is as much a fault as the narrow, pro-centrist media, but they have shifted their focus from black economic determinism toward rhetorical values.
There are few better examples of the failure of Black assimilation and black liberalism than the continuation of S. African Apartheid. While political freedoms have been gained, Mandela's crass political posturing led to a reformist, liberal regime which insured the continuation of white hegemony over the black population of S. Africa. There are still two economies, one black, one white, and there are private militias which use extra-judicial killings and torture to maintain these property relations. The following is a very good article detailing the self-destructive liberalism of the African National Congress, and the prevalence of the same kind of economic relations as were manifested during direct, political apartheid:
AJE: Many Still Poor in South Africa (http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/02/201021254435781291.html)
Today, we have a massive swelling of black and white ghettos alike. The ruling class is keen to maintain the apparent racial divisions in order to divide the working class, to make us think that blacks, whites and hispanics are each fighting for the same, mutually exclusive aims. We are not. We are in the same boat. Poor whites feel that their own losses are a result of hispanics working in this nation, and black people drawing too much welfare. This is what I've seen expressed in the mass, conservative media and among many of those whites I know. To put it bluntly, welfare is a near-negligible expense for our centrist state spending structure, and the presence of hispanics in the work force - who manage to wrest a small percentage GDP from their employers - is nowhere near as impressive as the incredibly powerful credit system (in addition to the centralizing corporate system) which has managed to maintain a permanent structure of indentured servitude for the vast majority of the American public.
Obama has maintained a remarkably similar class character to previous presidents: he follows a trend of deregulation, heightened taxes on the working class, pro-insurance firm legislation, and more vast increases in corporate welfare, in addition to the endorsement of vast layoffs of our public employee base. He expressed marginally liberation-oriented language, yet expanded the wars on ethnic 'enemies' of the US nationalist paradigm - domestically and abroad - and has done nothing for the vast number of black americans, who endorsed him explicitly with the expectation that Obama, as a black man who has expressed mild liberation stances, would provide for their interests at least to some degree.
Black liberation seems to have died in the United States. As sad as it seems, I believe that the only real change to this will occur when the whole system of credit and consumption inevitably fails, and we return to a production-oriented economy with vast reserves of newly-destitute and impoverished Americans. I have every hope for the human race to create and re-create itself in an increasingly productive manner, but this never comes at the behest of the conservative state-of-things, but rather with each proceeding antagonism against these stagnant structures.
Simply put, blacks will not be free in the US until they are free alongside whites, hispanics and all other ethnic minorities, in addition to having an equally potent share and control of the economic structure of society. Anything short of this doctrine will result in the sick liberalism seen in the likes of the failed South African National Congress, and subsequently a direct return and endorsement of the economic structure which enslaved the oppressed people in the first place.
Just hoping to got more responses (or a response at all!) here on RevLeft. As a side note, are Uni discussion just as bland wehre you are - almost everyone just ignores you when you talk about the material structure of society?