Re: AUT: strategy/ies

[fabian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Monty Neill said:
>I agree should not look only at US, I was
>simply giving examples from the US as I am far less knowledgeable about
>development and uses of racism in other nations -- tho certainly aware of its
>existence.

The problem here is that the whole debate around racism and slavery which
has gone on in the US for the last 50 years (partly in response to a
critique of racism coming from the mobilisation of the population against
Nazism for the pursuit of the second imperialist war) has looked it too
much as simply a phenomenon in North America rather than looking at the
broader picture. In fact it was only reading Robert Williams "The American
Indian in Western Legal Thought" that the whole business with Coke became
apparent. (My detailed arguments are to be published in '1606 and all
that', Race and Class, Jan 2000).

>Still leaves the questions of why the working class acceded (which is a far
>broader question than just acceding to racial differentiation) and more
>importantly what can be done? To say <Surely the problem is the failure of
>the working class as a whole, rather than as an aggregate of ethnically,
>racially or nationally defined segments
>to deal with racism that w ehave to deal with is true in an abstract way,
>but once racism becomes a structural relation within the working class, it
>means power relations within the class between sectors along racial lines are
>real and important and must be addressed. Black workers may dislike white
>workers, but most of the time the whites got more relative power -- so that
>is where the major aspect of the problem is and the solution must be.

It is precisely such structural relations as nation and class which channel
discourses along certain lines and make attempts to cut across harder.

To simply say that an 'internationalist' response is true in an abstract
way is to fail to see that the divisions of race and nation are equally
abstract. The difference is that these are abstractions which have become
valorised by cultrural labour precisely so that they become structural
relations not just within the working class but in society as a whole.

As for (US?) Black workers disliking white workers this is particularly
abstract, in that it is not quite clear what is meant by white workers.
i.e. are the miners in the Donbass 'White Workers'? In one sense yes as
regards most of them, in that if they were removed into a racialised
environment such as the USA they would be perceived and would come to see
themselves as 'white'. However as ethnicity is not rooted in 'colour' in
the Donbass, whilst they remain there their relationships are not
racialised in that fashion (although other ethnic charateristics maybe
important: i.e. being Jewish, Muslim, Russian Ukrainian, german (or were
all the Germans ethnically cleansed in the '40s?). Thus whilst some US
Black workers may take up a world view such as that promoted by the NOI
according to which for instance Turkish workers are white, they are a
minority. Far more common is a resentment of white people in the immediate
vicinity who are seen as enjoying a privileged status from which they are
excluded.

During the 60's civil rights movement, it was principally the US Black
communities who mobilised against racism rather than the White workers -
who may of  made common cause with them - or on occasion opposed them. As
that movement developed, it also came to see issues in a broader
international way eg re Vietnam, Africa etc. That seems to me to be a
better starting point than one rooted in theorising the need for a solution
emanating from white workers (something which can all to easily be
characterised as 'waiting' for white workers to make a move).

I think perhaps in the U.S. the crumbling of the American national identity
among the White working class will be more likely than (and indeed may
facilitate) a crumbling of their racial identity. I would be interested in
comments on this


Leutha Blissett




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