Re: [Marxism] The low point of the CNN-You Tube debate

["Joaquin Bustelo" <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Responding to some of my comments in relation to the state of the Black
Movement, Sayan writes: "Today there is a Black middle class, which means
that it is harder for the entire Black community to be radicalised and for
NAACP etc to be playing a similar role."

There has been a Black middle class for a long, long time and it was
precisely people from this class that provided much of the leadership for
the Black civil rights movement.

Sayan writes: "Another important point is that street drugs, especially
crack and meth epidemics, have ripped apart poor communities and destroyed
the social coherence that might have helped foster activism." 

I guess Sayan must be one of those people that watches TV News, and not only
that, actually believes what he sees there. Contrary to what Sayan asserts,
there have been no great "epidemics" of illegal drugs that have affected
mainly or disproportionately the Black communities. Repeated surveys over
decades now sponsored by the federal government show that drug use rates
among Blacks and Whites aren't significantly different, not when it comes to
illegal drugs, and among legal drugs, alcohol abuse is much more prevalent
among Whites than any other groups. And once you correct for factors like
higher unemployment (unemployment is associated with higher drug use),
differences in demographic structures of the populations (Blacks are on the
whole younger than whites), pretty much the ONLY difference that remains is
that whites have a much, much stronger propensity to be drunkards than
Blacks do. 

These facts then put a different face on the third element Sayan presents:
"Similarly, massive incarceration rates have also torn poor communities
apart." 

First, we should be clear that these massive incarceration rates aren't
exactly directed against "poor communities" in general. They are directed
against the BLACK community disproportionately and overwhelmingly.

Second, we should also be clear that, in addition to a generalized pattern
of repression in the Black communities, there has also been, clearly, a
campaign of terrorism and extra-legal repression against the Black community
and targeted assassinations of community leaders going back uninterruptedly
to the defeat of radical reconstruction shortly after the Civil War.

I find it difficult to argue that the combined official/extra-legal
repression TODAY is worse in any significant way than it was in the South in
the 1950's and early 1960's.

I believe a central reason for the state of the Black movement is that the
collapse and disappearance of the workers movement as a class movement left
Blacks nowhere else to turn to save the Democratic Party, in the fight for
political representation.  

Joaquín


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