RE: [A-List] Re: COUP d' ETAT IN WASHINGTON

["bon moun" <sherrynstan@xxxxxxx>]

<snip>But the blacks are not allowed to vote. That's why Florida went
for Bush. The blacks in the upper part of the state were
disenfranchised. Not allowed to vote, or long, long lines and much much
fraud.<snip>

Actually, African American voters turned comparatively strongly in the
last general election.  Florida was involved in a selective
disfranchisement conspiracy, using a technique ('mistaken' former-felon
disfranchisement) that 'scrubbed voter lists, and that
disproportionately impacted Black voters there.  The disfranchisement
conspiracy only worked in tandem with the judicial fiat.  That's not
saying African Americans are 'not allowed' to vote.  Not only do Black
folks vote in the South, we put more Black elected officials into office
than any other region, and no Democrat in the South can run an effective
campaign against Republicans without first substantially securing the
Black vote.  This is a key complication in US politics that must be
understood to understand the larger picture, and why Black voters are in
this pivotal position.  The Republican Party, since the inauguration of
Nixon's 'southern strategy' has transformed itself to take away the
former southern Democrat mantle of 'party of white supremacy.'  They
language is coded, but this is THE core value that holds together the
Republican Party in the US.  A key fraction of the Democratic Party base
is Black voters, and in states where African Americans constitute from
ten to 35 percent of the population (Black Belt states in the South),
they cannot be ignored by Democrats.  This constitutes a real degree of
political power, and one that Black folks are understandably reluctant
to 'throw away' on things like Nader campaigns (which are largely run by
white chauvinist progressives).  Failure to keep Democrats in office
consistently and immediately results in successful attacks directed at
Black social and political power by Republicans.  This Black-Democrat
alliance is not always a happy marriage, but no one has figured out yet
exactly how to develop an alternative.  This fusion also has
bureaucratic gatekeeper characteristics, and there is no shortage in
Black communities of compradors and jackleg opportunists, as there is no
shortage of genuine leadership.  All of them, leaders and jacklegs
alike, operate through what still remains the core organized institution
in Black communities - churches.  These churches are (according to my
friend Kamau Machuria) around 10 percent liberatory, 70 percent
mainstream (think NAACP), and around 20 percent opportunist.  That
mainstream element is a Democrat Party core.  You have to understand
African Americans as a colonized people to put the importance of the
church into context.  This community owns NO means of production, it is
occupied by a 'foreign' armed force (the cops) in many cases, and with
the exception of its comprador element (and a very few other
exceptions), it is systematically subordinated to and exploited by (in
many of the same ways as the global periphery) the dominant white
supremacist capitalist society.  There can be no organized mass
resistance, in current conditions, by African Americans, that does not
mobilize Black churches, and they remain a very real bulwark of Black
political power.  Leftists in the US who have looked at this, and the
persistent power of Black nationalism, as a kind of sideshow, or a
secondary contradiction, or who sort of uncritically throw around the
slogan, black and white unite and fight, are in the grip of a profound
white myopia that has blinded them to the CENTRAL place of the Black
liberation movement, still, in American politics.  Black politics shapes
Southern politics, and Southern politics shapes US politics.

Gosh, I got onto a tangent here, and I'm supposed to be on a deadline.
Strong coffee.

Best,

Stan