Re: [Marxism] Poor, white and pissed

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Michael Sims wrote:
> As a foreigner I only heard the expression from black americans used 
> ironically, it seemed to me.
>
> I'm talking about hearing it on U.S. media in Europe - I was never in the 
> situation to hear about it when I visited the US (Pitttsburgh) - then all 
> I heard was about some of my US colleagues being hill-billies. (In truth 
> they were ALL hill-billies just come out of the woods, 'cos they were 
> trying to tell me that the USSR was going to invade W.Europe and that I, 
> as a W.European was totally unqualified to object to that assesment 
> because we Europeans were naive and corrupted by ruskie's propaganda).
>
> If the expression white-crash as used by a black-american means "we're 
> "trash" but so are you" then isn't there the rudiments of class 
> consciousness and even solidarity ?
>
> How about then some "trash" movement?
>
> Lumpenproletariat of the world unite - you have literally nothing to lose?
>
> Perhaps it is time that marxists paid more attention to other parts of 
> society which were not so prominent in the 19thC?

Here's something in a similar vein:

Monthly Review, Jul-Aug, 2002
One or Two Things I Know about Us: Rethinking the Image and Role of the ?Okies?
by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

I was born country and this country is what I love.
?Alabama, ?Born Country,? 1992

When you?re running down my country you?re on the fighting side of me.
?Merle Haggard, ?The Fighting Side of Me,? 1970

While at work on this paper, I glanced at the headline in the morning 
newspaper: ?SWAT Team Kills Gunman at Sacramento Tax Office,? and I said to 
myself, ?Probably an Okie.? I read the article and found no reference to 
Okies?that would never happen in California these days?but the evidence was 
there: A white man named Jim Ray Holloway, age fifty-three, from Manteca, 
wearing a cowboy hat, carrying a rifle, a shotgun, and a hand gun, ex-cop, 
mad about taxes. The name, the age, the hometown in the agricultural 
Central Valley, the cowboy hat, the kinds of weapons, the career, the 
lightening rage at the state, all point to his being an Okie.

Although the newspaper report was sketchy about the man?s background, I can 
almost imagine his life: Possibly the child of Oklahoma sharecropping 
parents who migrated to California during the mid-1930s Dust Bowl, he was 
born one year after the publication of The Grapes of Wrath, perhaps in a 
labor camp in the Central Valley. His older brothers and sisters would have 
been taunted in school for being ragged, hungry, and dirty; his family was 
not allowed in the many places that hung signs that said ?No Okies.? His 
parents probably got on their feet during the wartime boom and soon he 
could feel superior at least toward the Mexicans and blacks because his 
parents taught him to be proud of being white and a native-born American.

He might have grown up to drive a truck or work in the oil fields or 
construction, but he became a California Highway Patrolman. Very likely he 
voted for Ronald Reagan for governor, Nixon for president, served in 
Vietnam, and hailed the presidency of Reagan. But he probably felt he had 
nothing to show for it and his beloved country was going to blacks on 
welfare, Vietnamese boat people, and the feminists and gays, with him 
footing the tax bill while no one had ever helped his family when they were 
in need. It?s a common story among the descendants of the Dust Bowl refugees.

The Okies were more accurately Southwestern, for they came not only from 
Oklahoma but also surrounding states. According to historian James Gregory 
in his definitive study, American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie 
Culture in California, by 1950, four million people or nearly a quarter of 
all persons born in Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, or Missouri, lived outside 
that region. A third of them settled in California while most of the others 
moved to Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. The best-known period 
of this trek westward is the period of the Dust Bowl, the 1930s, when the 
majority of the migrants first camped, and then settled mainly in the 
agricultural valleys of California. During the Second World War many of the 
Central Valley Dust Bowl migrants moved nearer the defense plants, 
particularly around Los Angeles, to work. And a half-million more 
Southwestern migrants, dubbed ?defense Okies,? arrived for wartime jobs.

To some, Okies and their descendants are bigots who supported George 
Wallace and the Minutemen; the ?little people? and ?silent majority? 
addressed by Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon; proponents of antiabortion 
and antigay initiatives. To some Marxists, the Okies are petit-bourgeoisie 
who fall in and out of the owning and working class, unreliable in union 
struggles. There is truth in these negative images of the Okie. Depending 
on economic times, Okies may be self-employed or reluctantly working for a 
boss, but their dream is always to acquire land. A populist tradition is 
associated with the Okies, yet often they appear to hate the rich only out 
of envy. Generally hostile to ?big government,? they are in the vanguard of 
defending their ?country.? Many have been eager cannon fodder, as well as 
officers, in their country?s foreign wars. They believe they are the 
designated beneficiaries of the theft of land from Indians and of the booty 
of empire.

In the end, the only advantage for most has been the color of their skin 
and the white supremacy, particularly toward African Americans, that 
pervades the culture; what they are not (black, Asian, ?foreign?) is as 
important as what they are (white, ?true Americans?) in their sense of 
propriety and self-esteem.

full: http://www.monthlyreview.org/0702dunbar.htm

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