redwinter
30th September 2008, 03:28
A major broadsheet on the black national question in the United States was just issued by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. It is sharply polemical in nature and based on a historical materialist analysis of the development of the black nation in the U.S. Many paths have been proposed by various forces towards the liberation of black people: from the "Obama road" to nationalism, religion, reinforcement of the family structure or Booker T. Washington-style "education" as the answer (or often a chimera of all of the above). The RCP's broadsheet lays out a vision of transformation of (what is now called) the USA through proletarian revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat moving towards communism - what that means and what our tasks are to move that process forward.
All that is put forward in this broadsheet is hotly contested and that is, of course, how things are. What are people's views on the black national question in the US, and the approach taken by the RCP,USA in the broadsheet?
Here is a link to the online version, and a short introduction:
The Oppression of Black People, the Crimes of This System, and the Revolution We Need (http://www.revcom.us/a/144/BNQ-en.html)
“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his cellphone”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”
Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?
If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.
Think what that means: that without even being told, you knew these victims of police murder and brutality were Black. Those cases—and the thousands more like them that have occurred just in the past few decades—add rivers of tears to an ocean of pain. And they are symptoms of a larger, still deeper problem.
But some today claim that America is a “post-racial society.” They say the “barriers to Black advancement” have been largely overcome. Many go so far as to put the main blame for the severe problems faced by Black people today on…Black people themselves. Others claim that better education, or more traditional families, or religion, or elections will solve things.
So the questions must be sharply posed: what really IS the problem? What is the source of it? And what is the solution?
"There will never be a revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t fully unleash and give expression to the sometimes openly expressed, sometimes expressed in partial ways, sometimes expressed in wrong ways, but deeply, deeply felt desire to be rid of these long centuries of oppression [of Black people]. There’s never gonna be a revolution in this country, and there never should be, that doesn’t make that one key foundation of what it’s all about."
--Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, from Question and Answer Sessions following the 7 Talks
All that is put forward in this broadsheet is hotly contested and that is, of course, how things are. What are people's views on the black national question in the US, and the approach taken by the RCP,USA in the broadsheet?
Here is a link to the online version, and a short introduction:
The Oppression of Black People, the Crimes of This System, and the Revolution We Need (http://www.revcom.us/a/144/BNQ-en.html)
“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his cellphone”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”
Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?
If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.
Think what that means: that without even being told, you knew these victims of police murder and brutality were Black. Those cases—and the thousands more like them that have occurred just in the past few decades—add rivers of tears to an ocean of pain. And they are symptoms of a larger, still deeper problem.
But some today claim that America is a “post-racial society.” They say the “barriers to Black advancement” have been largely overcome. Many go so far as to put the main blame for the severe problems faced by Black people today on…Black people themselves. Others claim that better education, or more traditional families, or religion, or elections will solve things.
So the questions must be sharply posed: what really IS the problem? What is the source of it? And what is the solution?
"There will never be a revolutionary movement in this country that doesn’t fully unleash and give expression to the sometimes openly expressed, sometimes expressed in partial ways, sometimes expressed in wrong ways, but deeply, deeply felt desire to be rid of these long centuries of oppression [of Black people]. There’s never gonna be a revolution in this country, and there never should be, that doesn’t make that one key foundation of what it’s all about."
--Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, from Question and Answer Sessions following the 7 Talks