[Marxism] A brief summary of my view on Blacks as a nation

["Jurriaan Bendien" <andromeda246@xxxxxxxxx>]

Fred,

I don't want to imply you are dumb, you are not, and I am prepared to
consider the Trotsky-Breitman-Feldman argument again. I realize you have put
a lot of thought into this.

But I confess, reading the arguments, it never really made any political
sense to me, except in that some groups of black people sought to express
their emancipatory aspirations in nationalist terms. But what they really
meant by that was the affirmation of their identity, independent control
over their own lives, and self-organisation of their own kind.

The core of your thesis is really that, as you say, "I do not think that
Blacks can exercise self-determination without sovereignty as a group."
That's a valid argument. But sovereignity over what, exactly?

That is the question. It is one thing to demand your own separate
organisations and institutions as a group, but it is another leap from there
to talking about a "nation". Normally, the concept of a "nation" is
considered to apply to a group of people in a specific geographic territory,
with, or aspiring to, its own governmental authority in that territory.

Would the goal of black liberation in that case be to lay claim to part of
US territory, with its own national government institutions, similar to
native Indians? How would that work, given that the majority of black people
live in urban areas, interspersed with other ethnic groups?

We had a similar debate in New Zealand concerning the strategic political
orientation of Maori people (about 10% of the population). In the case of
Maori people, claims to territory had some credibility, insofar as they were
the original inhabitants on New Zealand (their turangawaewae or home turf),
and in fact the Waitangi Tribunal settlements in some cases granted land and
fishing rights to reconstituted Maori tribal authorities (I worked with
people who designed the official tribal classification, used to establish
the tribal identification of Maori in government surveys).

The bulk of Maori people are however urbanised, and the only way a Maori
nation could conceivably be realized, would be if particular suburbs would
fall under Maori jurisdiction. Racism persists in New Zealand, but really
the core problems of Maori are in the area of unemployment, poverty, health,
and education - those problems cannot, however, be solved without
cooperation with the pakeha majority. You might own a plot of land, but that
in itself might not mean very much either.

The real question is then whether black people or Maori would benefit from
such an national arrangement... or whether it is really the case that the
arrangement would mean that they would be made responsible for their own
poverty and unemployment, and prevented from opportunities in pakeha
society, precisely on the ground of being a black or Maori citizen. Sort of
like, "go back to your reservation."

In my experience, appeals to nationalist ideology mainly made problems of
racism worse, and not better, since it tended to prevent useful co-operation
between ethnic groups, and just created another dimension of the status
hierarchy. Although you have to be respectful and mindful of differences, in
culture and politics I prefer to emphasize what people have in common,
rather than how they differ.

The basic problem in the modern world is how to unite people to work
together for collective goals... there are differences aplenty already. In
that sense, black nationalism is relevant only insofar it enables black
people to work together to ameliorate their conditions. But it is not clear
to me that they can improve their conditions substantially without
co-operation with non-black people, and I do not see how nationalist
ideology really promotes that, beyond forcing the acknowledgement of an
identity. As soon as you start to argue that you are entitled to resources
purely because of your ethnic identity, you tend to buy into the racist
argument, rather than getting out of it.

Jurriaan



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