Re: political practice [was ebonics; was anecdotage]

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> kelley <kcwalker@xxxxxxx> 08/24/99 12:47AM >>>

Charles:
>I don't know. It seems more like Wojtek falsely labels too many analyses
and critiques of OFF >campus ideology as examples of campus ideology.

Kelley:
huh?   what's off campus about ebonics?

Charles: It is a frequent topic on non-academic talk-radio in Detroit, which is off campus. Seemed to be off campus in the controversy in Oakland, California. Seems to me Oakland public schools are off campus in the sense it is used here.

Most people who speak Ebonics are off-campus. One might even say it is sort of an off-campus ideology.

"Ebonics" may have been coined by non-academicians. I think the current academic term is AVV or something like that. It used to be "non-Standard English".


There is a class of non-academic,non-college affiliated scholars and intellectuals , organic intellectuals , etc.



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Charles:
>Ideology is important off campus. He seems to think the struggle against
white supremacist >ideology is "on campus" and "self-victimizing" b.s.
This is geewillickers off.

Kelley:
well that's just good old fashioned PLAIN  b.s.. no such thing has been
said about it being only on campus.  self-victimizing?  i don't know
about that one, though clearly there is no consensus as to that issue
among those in the struggle against white supremacy is there?

Charles: Sure, in the course of the many months here, Wojtek has often classified critiques of racism as worthless in the way he is now criticizing "on campus" ideology".  It is part of "consciousness" not "institutional structure" or whatever his exact terminology.

Myself , I don't think of as part of the struggle against white supremacy anyone who thinks of racism as self-victimization. That's Reaganite, i.e. racist, claptrap. Clarence Thomas and Black neo-cons are not part of the struggle against white supremacy, but rather they are with the white supremacists - Traducers of the race, as Carter G. Woodson termed it.

(((((

-clip-
that said, a point for *merely* academic discussion.  marx did both
political activism and scholarly critique no?  he criticized everything
from the organization of capitalist production to academic ideology.
that's a nice model for activism if you ask me. HOWEVER, ask yourself
just who the hell marx was and how it was possible that he did both.  i
just love it when men log onto these lists and then whine about lack of
political activism.  these demands for authentic marxist street cred are
incredibly ahistorical and, at times, sexist.  charles you've told me
before that you struggle with this issue of how to balance scholarship
and political practice, how not to collapse one into the other, etc.
well, so do i.  surely you can see how this is an issue we all face, some
more than others i suspect, though for different kinds of reasons in
terms of their social location.   but i think all of us struggle under
the very real fact that 'the time bind' is a burden everyone carries
these days for various technological and economic reasons.

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Charles: I don't recall being concerned about collapsing scholarship and political practice. How do you mean ? I tend more to favor unity of theory and practice.


Charles Brown