[Marxism] A final comment on the white "brother" from Levittown

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I want to go back to the comments Ruthless quoted from the young man at the
bar in the quite race-conscious white enclave of Levittown, where the Black
population has been held to 1.5 percent, in part by a number of waves of
white racist mobilization. (All that is just "past racism" of course, for we
have all since been washed in the blood of the lamb, as demonstrated by the
film of McCain campaigning from the hotel balcony where King died.)

The Times magazine journalist wrote:
I asked him if the presidential campaign interested him. "Absolutely," he
said. Rapid fire, he told me the issues he cared about: "No. 1, gas
prices. It's killing everybody. No. 2, immigrants. They should go back
to Mexico. Three, guns. Everybody should have the right to bear arms.
In fact, everyone should have a gun in this day and age."

I wondered if he was a Republican. "Are you kidding?" he said. "I'm a
Democrat all the way. I hate Republicans."

Woods, who is 32, said that he had been trained at the local technical
high school as a land surveyor but had been working only sporadically.
He had been picking up "side jobs," a term I heard over and over again
in Levittown. It refers to temporary labor: carpentry, landscaping,
junk hauling.

Woods was for Hillary Clinton, and if Obama was the Democratic
nominee, he said he would vote for the Republican, John McCain, in
November.

Fred comments:

I am really struck how Woods "rapid fire" dished out an excellent example of
a right-wing, antiforeign,anti-Black, anti-Latino, anti-immigrant program
cast in terms of appealing to white workers who feel in terms both racial
and national -- with these being delicately flavored throughout with class
considerations -- that "their" country is being taken away from them, but
who are perhaps reluctant or uncomfortable about being identified as
racists.

The three-point program starts with the most immediate economic interest --
oil prices, which really are slaughtering independent truck-drivers, and
workers in the fleets as well. It moves on to "jobs": send all the
immigrants back to Mexico. And then takes up the need to arm the people `--
the real people, the good people, the honest people -- against the
criminals.

It's excellent.  And if the guy came up with that entirely on his own, he is
clearly very intelligent and EXTREMELY political. He will be heard from
again, I reckon. I am certainly not nearly as good as he is at that kind of
on the spot programmatic formulation.

And it is all topped off, as such an electoral program generally should be
with the governmental slogan of the hour.  In this case: "Hate Obama! Stop
Obama."  Which, of course means vote white, even if Condoleeza runs as
vice-presidential candidate of a white man who looks kind of peaked to me.
(Although this customer would probably be none too pleased with that, he
might decide tactically that he had to go with it under the circumstances,
the white many having retreated so far already.)

At any rate if the KKK and other rightist groups haven't adopted this
transitional approach to the election campaign, we can expect that the more
alert of them (David Duke, for example) will be doing something of the sort
soon.

Note that this guy himself, who I am sure has more profound motivations,
claims that the only reason he hates Obama even more than he claims to
"hate" Republicans is his inexperience. I think he does not care what reason
you give for voting white in this election, as long as you vote white.
Remember this is a transitional approach, not an ultimatistic one.

You can vote against Obama because you hate liberals, because you think he's
a phony. In this guy's book, you've taken the first step if you say "Down
With Obama" and vote accordingly.

I am all for supporting the truckers' strike but socialists also have to
keep in mind that you will be meeting a layer of workers who are being
approached and even worked on daily by this kind of ultraright, racist
politics. Just a fact.

I'm far from being for calling everyone a racist, but doing politics
oriented toward working people and the oppressed means being able to pick 
up when a worker has bought into and is promoting such a program. Such
things have to be called what they are.

Finally, and I have been generally trying to avoid this myself, I think it
is a mistake to single out Obama from the other candidates for special
opposition or denigration or anti-capitalist hate talk or whatever. He
should be dealt with as one of the bourgeois candidates and part of the
package.  

THERE ARE NO REASONS FOR OPPOSING OBAMA, NONE WHATEVER, THAT AREN'T REASONS
FOR OPPOSING CLINTON AND MCCAIN AS WELL.  NOR DO BLACKS HAVE A SPECIAL DUTY
TO OPPOSE OBAMA BECAUSE THEY ARE OVERWHELMINGLY LIKELY TO SUPPORT HIM. THERE
IS NO NEED FOR SPECIAL CAMPAIGNING AGAINST OBAMA THAT IS NOT SIMULTANEOUSLY
CAMPAIGNING AGAINST THE OTHER TWO.

And  main task is not to desperately struggle to convince people not to vote
for him, but get out ideas and perspectives and proposals that will remain
legitimate no matter who wins and, perhaps, even more so if Obama wins.`

I raise this because I am pretty sure I could have  walked into that bar and
sold that guy a copy of the Militant or Socialist Action based on their
exposures of Obama. (Whether a Black person could walk into that bar at all
is, of course, a question I can't answer. If the reporter was Black, he may
have been given a special dispensation.) I could probably have talked about
the war, socialism, the whole deal. He would have smiled and, if he had the
money, bought a copy.

White solidarity, after all.

We are entering a period in which racist campaigning of various types will
be very much part of the political picture, at least if Obama is nominated
(and the polls claim he is gaining in Pennsylvania). We should keep our
political priorities where they belong.
Fred Feldman

 


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