RE: Moderator's note and Bourgeois Feminism (Brumback)

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mohammad wrote:

But this does not mean, as Brumback suggests, that Marxists have to fawn
over every movement because it is "black", etc. For example:

"Would anyone on this list argue that african-americans should *not* get
together, on their own with no whites present, to define their own problems
and strategize their own struggle?"

Blacks are not animals just released from the zoo, who have yet to "get
together", who we as Marxists must simply observe like tourists. The fact
of the matter is, there are no conspiratorial political organizations out
there that blacks happen to join in on, "with no whites present". There is
only a thing we call reality: blacks who join the bourgeois class and rape
the proletariat with their white brothers, and blacks who are in the ranks
of the proletarian class alongside whites.

Response (Jim C) I thought this was beautifully put. At our Blackfoot
Tribunal in Brocket Alberta, dealing with Residential School horrors and
genocide, Louis (and Mac) and some other whites were present. In the case of
Louis, but not in the case of others, Louis was present during some of our
most sensitive converesations with some of the leading Chiefs and Spiritual
Leaders of the Blackfoot. No one said "we need to be together, and learn how
to speak/work with each other with no whites around." There is a general
recognition that not only do Blackfoot need the assistance and support of
non-Blackfoot, but also, that non-Blackfoot could draw from our own
experiences, support and struggles that bear on or even parallel those
experiences, support and struggles of non-Blackfoot. Further, there were
"Blackfoot" at that Tribunal (spies and traitors) that would never be
allowed into the really private conversations to which Louis was invited; we
will take a principled non-Blackfoot freedom fighter over a nominal
Blackfoot traitor or class/nation enemy any day. That is one of the
differences between "identity politics" versus national liberation struggles
of oppressed minorities--national liberation struggles have some
nationalistic focus for the purpose of mobilizing oppressed and "uneducated"
(about who the real enemies are) members of the nation, but the focus is not
on nationalism as an end in itself but rather as a vehicle for mobilizing
masses, raising consciousness, preserving progressive aspects of the nation
itself and linking-up with other oppressed nations and peoples in a common
struggle.

Jim C

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