Anti-racist solidarity & the class struggle
By
Monica Moorehead
Published Mar 16, 2005 1:19 PM
The following is excerpted from a talk at
a Feb. 25 Black History Month forum in New York.
It is
certainly true that Black people in the U.S. as a whole are not in the same
economic and political situationtoday compared to a half-century ago. But can we
still say that Black people in general have full equality?
Facts and
figures don’t lie.
According to a Jan. 17 New York Times article:
“Black middle-class families on average had one-fourth of the wealth of
similarly educated, similarly employed white middle-class families. ... Black
families as a whole had only 10 cents in wealth for every dollar white families
had, according to government figures. ... less than half of Black households own
their homes, while 75 percent of white households do.”
Here are
statistics issued by the Urban League in 2004: “The 2000 census found that
91.8 percent of white students graduated from high school, compared with 83.7
percent of Black students. ... On average, Blacks are twice as likely to die
from disease, accident and homicide as whites; the life expectancy for Blacks is
72 years, or six years less than that of whites. The average prison sentence for
a Black person is six months longer than that for whites.”
There
were more young Black men in prison in 2002 than in universities and colleges.
(Justice Policy Institute, 2000)
Lynchings, by and large, have been
replaced with rampant police brutality.
Black people are
“officially” 12 percent of the overall U.S. population. So where are
the 12 African American senators?
Right now there is only one Black
senator. There are only 39 Black members of the House of Representatives which
numbers 435 members overall. We are all aware of the gross disenfranchisement of
Black voters.
These facts prove that political and economic equality is
still being denied to Black people as an oppressed nationality in
disproportionate numbers.
What is the root cause of this inequality for
Black people in the United States?
Racism is endemic to capitalism. It
goes back to the days when Native nations were forced off of their lands through
mass extermination, slavery and the legacy of slavery, the theft of two-thirds
of Mexico, wars of colonial expansion in Puerto Rico, the Philippines and much
more.
Workers on the whole are exploited by the bosses. But a vast
majority of the workers are super-exploited and super-oppressed—if they
belong to a particular nationality, if they are a woman, if they are attracted
to the same sex or have a “different” gender expression.
Despite a range of social strata that continues to narrow as living
standards, including real wages, drop, there are still two fundamental classes:
the working class, the overwhelming majority of the world who own nothing but
their ability to labor, and the tiny ruling class which owns everything.
Therefore the struggle between these two classes is inevitable and
irreconcilable.
Within this general framework racism is the main weapon
that the bosses use, not only to super-exploit and super-oppress whole peoples
based on their nationality, but to divide and conquer the multi-national working
class to keep us from uniting against all of the injustices.
The current
movement must try very hard not to repeat mistakes made in the past on the
importance of building solidarity, especially with the most oppressed. During
the 1920s, the Universal Negro Improvement Association or the Back to Africa
movement was the largest mass movement of Black people at that time and of the
20th century as a whole. It was an international movement of Black people, with
a strong base in the United States, who were organizing to go back to their
African homeland.
Their movement was led by the charismatic Jamaican
leader Marcus Garvey, who was a nationalist. The U.S. government attempted to
repress this movement by demonizing its leadership. Instead of defending Garvey
against racist government repression, many white socialists and communists in
the United States attacked him. Why? Because they disagreed with his view of
putting the aspirations of Black people before the aspirations of the entire
working class.
This white chauvinist behavior was a tre mendous setback in
the struggle against racism and national oppression, which is part and parcel of
strengthening class unity. These particular communists and socialists forgot the
significant principle that Lenin stressed: that Marxists must defend the right
to self-determination for oppressed nations. Faced with more isolation by the
broader movement and intensified government attacks, Garvey was eventually
deported to Eng land, where he passed away and eventually so did the movement he
helped build.
The main lesson is that disagreeing with the nationalism of
peoples of color should not become a barrier to building class unity against a
common oppressor.
Uniting the struggles is key
Recently,
President George W. Bush introduced his 2006 budget, amounting to $2.57
trillion. More than 150 social programs are on the chopping block in order to
make the war makers and super-rich very happy while cities and rural areas
deteriorate.
These cuts will have a great impact on Medicaid, educational
programs like Head Start, Pell student grants, the Environ mental Protection
Agency and much more.
At that same time, on top of the $200 billion that
Democrats and Republicans have already spent on the Iraq War and the so-called
war on terrorism, Bush plans to ask Congress for an additional $80 billion. This
war budget represents class warfare here and abroad.
There is no doubt
that Black people and other people of color will suffer from these cuts in
disproportionate numbers.
The working class here is suffering from low
wages, declining benefits, speed-ups, outsourcing and budget cuts. The bosses
are trying to take back all the gains that were won in the 1930s and 1960s
through mass, militant struggle.
The flip side is that the high-tech,
low-pay restructuring of the economy is laying the material basis for forging
political solidarity within the working class to carry out the struggle for
human needs.
For March 19, the second anniversary of the Iraq War, there
is a worldwide call for protests. Many of these demonstrations will demand that
the money going to sustain war and occupation be spent instead on human
needs.
This merging of demands is coming from strong working-class
leadership—like those who initiated the Million Worker March. The MWM
leadership is playing a leading role in building the March 19
protests.
The Million Worker March was initiated by the Black leadership
of Local 10 of the International Longshore Workers Union in San Francisco along
with Brenda Stokely and others. It signals the birth of a new, independent
workers’ movement to win real justice and equality especially for the most
oppressed workers, including immigrant workers.
So let’s win more
activists to help advance the cause of liberating our class from the shackles of
all forms of oppression and exploitation. They are out there, and the only way
that we can attract them and win them to our ranks is to organize, organize and
organize.
Long live the struggle for Black liberation! Long live the
struggle for class emancipation! Build a workers’ world!
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