(John Brown, link)
Great discussion on "Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize: Briding Communities, Building a Majority Movement" with some of my favorite people, who also happen to be 'giants' in the struggle for human rights. Heather Booth, founding Exec. Director of the NAACP National Voter Fund, and former SNCC activist, Lawrence Guyot, former ANC commissioner and chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, Sarah Browning, founder of DC Poets Against The War, and Timothy Jenkins, activist with SNCC, and the Nonviolent Action Group at Howard, and a candidate for School Board President.
Ok, I have to say, the one issue that wasn't really addressed is how to create a culture of resistance that brings together all the disparate elements of the left. One thing I've noticed is how the white left has a tendency to just go off and do its own thing, creating 'cultural resistance' and assuming its somehow universally applicable to blacks, Latinos, and other melanized peoples. Worse yet, there is a pretty sorry history of the white left coopting the language and leadership of black movements in America, and then sailing off on its own. Its like the colonial mentality of radical organizing; the Communist Party esp was famous for it. (Harold Cruse, Crisis of the Negro Intellectual) This sort of mentality assumes that everyone is included, even if thats not the case, and creates this language of talking about struggle that makes it very difficult for everyone to enter the conversation...
White leftists -- the punks, anarchists, vegans, and other counterculturals gotta learn about how to create spaces where that can happen, and it seems like something that is very very difficult to do for a variety of reasons: arrogance, fear, racism, simple social ineptitude, privilege, and so on. I thank the organizer Mark Andersen for attempting this very difficult task; it is certainly an ongoing process. Until white leftists can both enter the spaces of Africans, Latinos, and other melanized peoples, as well as create social and cultural spaces that feel truly welcoming to those we claim solidarity with, our conversation will remain rooted in a fundamentally stale and recycled paradigm, and the situation in America will continue along its present path of almost total domination by the right wing. Your thoughts?
Monday, October 09, 2006
On radical organizing among the white left
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6 comments:
Can the Left afford Identity politics?
"On radical organizing among the white left"
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i liked this one better since it was the more honest version, unedited.
and i know i already said this to you, but wanted to reciprocate the direction of the conversation to get good feedback and ideas:
i think this sentence is part of the problem:
"Until we as white leftists can create social and cultural spaces that feel truly welcoming to those we claim solidarity with, the conversation will remain rooted in a fundamentally stale and recycled paradigm, and the situation in America will continue along its present path of almost total domination by the right wing. Your thoughts?"
i think the white left should work on earning a presence in the genuine spaces that already exist, where they have always and perhaps only existed... in african and indigenous communities. john brown had it right.
i think this topic on the liberator boards is still relevant to getting to that point of understanding, check it out if you haven't already:
The Dilemma of the Metaphorical Mulatto
http://cybermessageboard.fatcow.com/mplsli/viewtopic.php?t=319
Yeah...I have to say that the "white Leftist" concept in general rubs me the wrong way. What is that exactly? What's WHITE anyway?
I'm saying that because I'm trying to understand the cultural framework of the so-called "white Left." What are the experiences that make one "left" of the "whites"? Is one still "white" then? Does a white leftist renounce all of their ties and gains to "whiteness" for the sake of greater humanity (i.e. John Brown, who died with a group of nameless Africans who we sometimes seem to forget were right there at Harper's Ferry!).
I am of the opinion that the point has already been missed if a person even refer to themselves as a "white Leftist"...they have already submitted to the recent phenomenon of racial construction, accepted the limitations associated with these constructs (as well as advantages) and reached back (as an afterthought) to slap on the term "Left."
I'm wondering what is the origin of the thought of the "white Left"?
It brings to mind the experiments of philosophers who tried to imagine a "different world." And its funny how the ideologies of these philosophers were founded in their existing cultural framework, making it difficult to ever step outside of these frameworks to truly create something "different" (e.g. Marx...check Cedric Robinson's "Black Marxism"...he breaks it down with scholarly precision).
"I think the white left should work on earning a presence in the genuine spaces that already exist, where they have always and perhaps only existed... in african and indigenous communities. john brown had it right."
My point: I think what Brian said was key, because it forces us to go back to the chronology and let the timeline speak for itself (as far as human existence, traditions and methods of survival that WORK, etc). What are the existing spaces that represent the best in humanity? How do those who are "left" of the dominate class' ideology step outside that dominate class enough to figure out who THEY are (because what would one be if one were not "white" in AMERICA...what place does one have in Europe? What foundations can one go back to? Culturally? Ideologically? What culture does one have outside of being a "white American"? Important questions if one wants to go left!)
I think that the so-called "white Left" is going to have to first stop being white...
the "white Left" is going to have to figure out what they want:
1)to exist as humans among the world of humans who have been EXISTING before the ancestors of the so-called whites knew up South from down North (Ancient Kmt).
2)To hold on to their white-Leftness while trying to covertly guide the direction of what the rest of us are doing.
3)Sell out
I think those are the questions that need to be asked: what is the "white Left" going to do? Where exactly does the "white-Left" stand? How much of that is married to these ol' United States? What are the assumptions made by the "white Left" and how much of that is based on the legacy of dominance and slavery exercised in the Americas which gives the "white Left" such a privileged position?
"White leftists -- the punks, anarchists, vegans, and other counterculturals gotta learn about how to create spaces where that can happen, and it seems like something that is very very difficult to do for a variety of reasons: arrogance, fear, racism, simple social ineptitude, privilege, and so on."
Counter-culture means just that. Anything fits for that term if it sits outside of the dominate ideology. The problem is, that rebellious coming-of-age shoe doesn't quite fit for every thing.
My need to be African is no more rebellious than my need to breathe. How can such a natural thing be lumped together with the anti-everything mentality of "couter-culturalists"?
Articles on the Counterculture that arose in the 60s have generally noted that number of hippies smoking marijuana in that decade slowed and destroyed much of the social politics of the "anti-establishment". I think sometimes that that needs to be remembered. As someone who considers themselves as a part of this generation, I think we have to take serious time to consider the proliferation of two drugs: cigarettes and marijuana. The 60s made consumption of both somewhat socially acceptable, and the U.S. on the whole has accepted a certain amount of drug use. The point is that while I think it is a waste of time to demoralize an individual for smoking either, I think we need to take a good look at the message we put out there in regards to tobacco and marijuana. Both proliferate in U.S. culture. So, in effect I think that as an observer of counter culture thinkers, what I take away has more to do with the past lessons of that movement as it unfolded in the 60s and throughout the 70s.
does the white left even love us?
we still have not applied the things that Charles V. Hamilton and Kwame Ture wrote in "Black Power..."
we have to come to table on equal terms. we still have not done that. .the white left continues to align itself with us for THEIR gain..
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