The "new racism" in the United States
USA publicity and a more passive response. Many of the 1986 incidents are typical of the brand of racism that permeates the culture of the United States:
• In January 1986, six whites led by a Ku Klux Klan (KKK) member attacked a group of Latinos with baseball bats in Cedartown, Georgia, alleging that one of them had dated a white woman.
• In February, armed whites tried to
THE UNITED STATES has just passed through a year, 1987, that witnessed a dramatic increase in media reports about racist attacks against people of color. At the same time, it was a year of mass resistance to racism unparalleled in over a decade. These and other developments have stimulated a discussion among individuals and groups on the US left as to whether a "new racism" has emerged, and, if it has, what kind of political response is appropriate.
It may not be possible to fully answer such a question at this time; much information is lacking about certain aspects of the situation, such as the degree of racist and anti-racist activity within the union movement at present, and the numerical strength and actual policies of a number of national and local organizations of people of color. Nevertheless, it is possible to delineate some features of the political terrain of what may be a new conjuncture.
ALAN WALD two protests receiving national attention. On January 21, 1987, 2,000 people marched in Manhattan in a
"Day of Mourning" for Michael Griffiths, a stranded Black motorist who was chased by a gang of racist whites to his death under the wheels of a car in Howard Beach,
New York, on December 2, 1986 see IV
117]. Three days later, 20,000 people mobilized from across the country to march against Ku Klux Klan violence in Forsythe
County, Georgia.
Twelve months later, 1987 closed with the national media devoting considerable attention to the jury trial of the Howard
Beach lynchers, in which the prosecuting attorneys tried to convict the victims for being poor and Black. Since the anti-racist activists in New York and elsewhere were acutely conscious that the judicial system ultimately serves the racist order, they kept up as much pressure as they could during and after the trial to demand serious convictions and sentences. Activists rightly feared that a failure to convict or the rendering of token sentences would encourage similar violence against people of color.
In December 1987, three of the Howard
Beach lynchers were declared "not guilty"
of murder; they were found guilty merely of manslaughter, which meant that they might spend as little as eighteen months in jail. However, as the sentences were subsequently handed down, the punishments
International Viewpoint #138 • April 4, 1988 turned out to be fairly stiff; Jon Lester, the most vicious, received the maximum of ten to thirty years.
These results were beneficial in communicating the idea to people of color that mobilization and protest can have an effect, especially if massive and militant. After all, whatever the weaknesses of the Howard Beach sentences, they were a significant improvement over the acquittal six months earlier of Bernhard Goetz, the vigilante gunman who in 1984 cold-bloodedly tried to execute several Afro-American youths for harassing him on a New York
Howard Beach events not isolated
It is also crucial to note that the highlypublicized Howard Beach events were immediately preceded and followed by other atrocities against non-whites. For example, on the day before the Howard Beach murder, and in the same precinct, two Puerto Ricans were battered by a gang of whites. Three weeks later, according to the Coalition of Asian Americans Against Racial Violence, the New York police broke into the home of a Chinatown family, beating
Moreover, the previous year, 1986, had also been one of relentless violence against people of color, although with less national throw the Black leader of the University of Texas anti-apartheid movement from an eighth-floor dormitory window.
• In May, a Black cyclist in Brooklyn was stabbed to death by a white gang.
• In June, a Chinese-American teenager was knifed in Brooklyn by whites shouting, "These Chinks don't belong in this neighborhood."
• In July, a Black teenager was murdered in Lake County, Illinois, by a man shouting allegiance to the KKK as he fired.
• In September, whites in Toledo, Ohio, sodomized with a lead pipe and attempted to castrate a Black man.
• In December, a week before the Howard Beach murder, an off-duty police officer in Ellenville, New York, "accidentally" killed a Black man with a chokehold.
Racist violence a fixture of US society
These and similar events demonstrate that ongoing violence against people of color was a fixture of US society long before the more spectacularly-publicized incidents of 1986-87. Unfortunately, there is really no way of determining whether there was an absolute quantitative increase in the numbers of racist attacks in the recent months, since no national organization exists to prepare such a tabulation, and many racist attacks occur in rural areas where they go unreported.
While it is obvious that, in 1987, publicity about such violence rose significantly, along with the number of anti-racist mobilizations in protest, no one has yet to provide a fully satisfactory explanation for this development. However, one of the areas that received a dramatic increase of attention has been racism directed against university students of color; here, there are clearly several factors converging to create a spe-
For example, racist attacks on campuses have sometimes had a relationship to a growing aggressiveness in political activity by Black students inspired by the new rise of the South African liberation struggle. Anti-apartheid organizations exist on a number of campuses where they have built public shanties as symbolic reminders of the living conditions of Black South Africans. Many of these shanties have been destroyed by right-wing organizations; at 1. These and other events are reported in "The empire strikes back: racial violence on the rise," Minority Trendsetter 1, No.1, April/May 1987, pp.4-5.
USA
The economic crisis in the US continues to lower the living standard of the working class in general and of people of color in particular. The possibility of total economic collapse was dramatized by the sensational stock market crash of last October, although most on the left are not anticipating a mechanical repeat of 1929.9 Nevertheless,
NO TO RACISM AT HOME U.S. OUT OF GRENADA U.S. STOP INVADING NICARANUA END V.S. SUPPORT OF APARTHEID D.C. NATIONAL BLACK INDEPENDERT POLITICAL PARTY Johns Hopkins University, a shanty was even doused with gasoline and set on fire while four students slept inside.
However, racist incidents reported in 1987 at places such as Macalaster College in Minnesota, Wellesley College in Massachusetts, University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Purdue University in Indiana, Columbia University in New York City, Syracuse University in upstate New York, and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, tend to follow the traditional scenario of whites attacking people of color.
All the "classical" features of anti-Black racism are especially evident in one of the most disgusting episodes — the attack on Tawana Braley, a popular sixteen-year-old Black highschool student in Wappingers Falls, New York, who was raped and beaten. When she was found, her hair had been chopped off, she was covered with faces and wrapped in a plastic bag, and the words and "KKK" were scrawled on her
Here, in the form and features of the assault - indeed, inscribed on the very body of the victim! - one finds traces of modern racism's origins in colonialism and the slave trade that still endure in the 1980s. At that time, as a rationale for conquest and enslavement, people of color were relegated to a sub-human category by white Europeans who, emerging from Mediaeval culture, projected their own repressed psycho-sexual obsessions onto their victims.3 Although the forms of domination and exploitation of people of color today are different, there is a strong continuity with the past transmitted through the racist culture of the society of the United States with which every child and adult is inculcated
The contours of contemporary racism are also seen in a number of other events that have received considerable attention on the
US left, such as the following:
• The continuation of the struggle of more than 10,000 Dineh (Navaho) people living in the Big Mountain area of Arizona who face forced removal from their ancestral homeland by the National Guard, due to the machinations of energy
• The continued holding of the "Hartford 15," supporters of Puerto Rican independence, in "preventive detention," following their 1985 arrest as "terrorists." 5
• The controversy surrounding institution of a fraudulent "amnesty" for undocu-
• The steady stream of reports of hostility towards and attacks against new immifrom Cambodia, Laos Character of racist attacks is not new
Some on the left have already referred to the present situation as one of a "new racism." 8 The fundamental character of the racist attacks, however, cannot be said to be new. On the other hand, the context in which these attacks have occurred does have many new features. A recognition of these may be helpful in formulating strategies for the immediate defence of communities of people of color, as well as for building unity with struggles of the working class and radical students. Among the major developments creating increased pressure and stress on the lives and struggles of people of color are the decline of the US economy, the persistence of de facto segregation ("American apartheid"), the crisis of leadership among people of color, the AIDS epidemic and the new growth of white supremacists.
the everyday reality for people of color — especially Blacks, Latinos and Native Peoples — is that, while they continue to suffer immense impoverishment at an astonishing rate, the bonuses and profits of the exploiters continue to skyrocket.1°
US "underclass" quadrupled in 1970s
In fact, even though US social scientists have traditionally eschewed the use of "class" as a relevant category in the United States, there is now widespread talk of the existence of an "underclass" of citizens. This group, for whom unemployment and an environment of desperate violence and drugs are the norm, quadrupled during the 1970s. At the present time, 28% of Black families have incomes below the poverty
Social and economic segregation are still the reality, in the North as well as the South. Most Black Americans live in neighborhoods that are all Black or mainly so, send their children to schools mainly comprised of people of color, and have few sustained contacts with the white world.
This separate world is both economically and culturally defined. Since 1980, reported unemployment has generally been 7% for all people but 17% for Black males. Native Americans have the highest rate of unemployment of any ethnic group. Sixteen states have over 40% unemployment rates for Native peoples; the range nationally is from 18% to 69%. Chicano families average $8,000 a year less than the national average, and every major center of the Chicano population has been heavily hit with plant closures and mass layoffs.!2
There has even been sensational publicity about the exclusion of Black athletes from executive positions in sports. Only one Black holds a management position or 2. Jeff Jones, "Upstate New York march," Guardian, January 27, 1988, p.6. 3. See Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American attitudes toward the negro, 1550-1812, 1969. 4. See Louise A. Sinesio, "Time is running out for Navajo People," New Democrat, June 16, 1986, pp.2-3. 5. See Juan Segarra et al, "Hartford Case," Guardian, August 12, 1987, pp.12-13. 6. See Michael Novick, "Amnesty program a fiasco," ibid, August 26, 1987, p.6. 7. See "Ethnic hostilities in Lowell," New York Times, 8. See Radical America 20, No.5, 1986, special issue on "Race and community control, media, politics." 9. See the feature article on the world economy by Emest Mandel in /V 130, November 23, 1987. 10. New York Times, December 20, 1987, p.15 11. Andrew Hacker, "American apartheid," New York
Won. Demic 1s, SiT, a 3. People Daily 21
World, December 13, 1987, pp.14-15. April 4, 1988 #138 International Viewpoint
USA above in all of baseball. In the National Football League, 55% of the players are Black, but there has never been a Black coach. 13
The Afro-American community in particular has passed through a period of nearly two decades in which elected officials have come to power - especially the phenomenon of Black mayors in major cities - with little or no advancement for the masses, although the small Black middle class has strengthened its own economic position. 14 In cities such as Detroit, the new situation has been compared to "neocolonialism."
Democratic Party losing credibility
While the Democratic Party is losing credibility as an instrument of social reform, no alternative has yet appeared.'5 Jesse Jackson's second effort to capture the presidential nomination has so far indicated a retreat on his part from his more radical positions of 1982.16 In Philadelphia, Black voters were forced by the Democrats to re-elect Mayor Goode, who on May 13, 1985, murderously bombed a Black neighborhood, as the only alternative to a white racist candidate. In Detroit, a majority Black city with a Black mayor and administration, the number of households receiving public assistance was 22% in 1970, and is now 28%. In 1985 there were 635 murders in Detroit, seven times the national average. 173 children under 17 were shot in the first half of 1987. Thousands took to the streets under the leadership of an organization called "Save Our Sons and Daughters." 17 Unfortunately, the far left has yet to develop a viable program to respond to immediate issues of this type.
Other features of the "crisis of leadership" involve various elements of a new Black right. Some of these are Black intellectuals supporting Reagan, such as Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institute and Glen Loury of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. 18 Others — such as Ralph Abernathy, Dick Gregory, Hosea Williams and Mayor Charles Evers (brother of the martyred Medgar Evers) - openly support the reactionary UNITA of Jonas Savimbi in Angola.' Another aspect of the crisis in leadership is the growth of Black social democracy, exemplified in the popularity of books by William Julius Wilson, such as The declining significance of race (1978) and The truly disadvantaged (1987). These undermine affirmative action arguments and propose unrealistic (and unde-
"middle class" economic despair.2°
Growing concern about AIDS has brought more attention to poor health conditions among Blacks and Latinos, who are among the hardest hit sectors of the population due to a high rate of intravenous drug 22 use. While Blacks and Latinos are approxii mately 18% of the US population, they International Viewpoint #138 • April 4, 1988 constitute 39% of all AIDS victims." In general, racial minorities in the US suffer 60,000 excess deaths each year due to inadequate health care.
Well-armed right-wing racist groups are thriving across the United States. Unfortunately, they are a growing influence among many of those affected by the economic crisis — such as rural farmers, urban unemployed and youth. The far right also receives a boost from the upsurge in religious fundamentalism in the US. Despite a decline in membership, the KKK has been holding weekly public appearances, with special strength exhibited in Georgia and
According to a report of Klanwatch, an organization monitoring white supremacists, racists are shedding robes in favor of other strategies. They now go under other names such as Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations, Christian Identity Movement, Liber-
Populist Party, National Democratic Front and Aryan Youth movement. There are Nazi youth gangs in every major city. Survival festivals are held in the mid-west in which as many as 1,500 "Christian Patriots" will gather to practice weapons and study racism.2
While the above and other factors make life more difficult than ever for people of color in the US, there are also national and international factors at work that create new possibilities for fighting back effectively and that impel people of color and their allies toward perspective of revolutionary socialism.
First, and most importantly, there are signs of a new unity among people of color across the nation. Recent events in celebration of the new holiday honoring the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., were broadly multi-racial in some areas; and many of the new leaderships of university and community struggles have made a special point of emphasizing the common oppression and common goals of all people targeted by
On an international scale, revolutionary movements among people of color have taken a dramatic upswing. For weeks at a time millions of North Americans watched massive demonstrations of Blacks in South Africa; they have witnessed the Nicaraguans resisting and outmaneuvering the Reagan administration; and they have observed the Palestinians on the West Bank mobilize heroically against the Zionist
While the labor movement has continued in retreat, important events have occurred such as the successful strike of the Chicana workers in Watsonville, California, and several anti-apartheid actions in the union
Advances for cultural movements
There have also been significant developments in the cultural life of the United States influencing the current state of political struggles. Following the decline of the nationalist movements of Blacks and Chicanos that reached their height in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many left-wing groups revised their views and took on the new position that people of color are not oppressed nationalities with an independent dynamic, only super-exploited workers. 24
Nevertheless, semi-autonomous cultural movements of people of color have marched steadily forward during this past 13. Herb Boyd, "Stiff arm of racism," Guardian, August 26, 1987, p.11. 14. See Steve Zeluck, "Black mayors," Against the Current 2, No. 4 (Winter 1984, old series), pp.14-15. 15. See Mfanya D. Tryman, cratic Party," Black Scholar 17, No.6, December 1986, 16. For an excellent socialist critique of the Jackson campaign, see Joanna Misnik, "The Rainbow: storm clouds ahead?" Against the Current 11, November/ December 1987, pp. 3-7. 17. See Salim Muwakkil, "Young tries to restore order," In These Times, September 16-22, 1987, pp.6-7. 18. See Salim Muwakkil, "New issues reviving dormant arguments," ibid, November 13-19, 1985, p.3. 19. A. C. Ola, "Black "leaders' sew confusion." Guar20. A forthcoming issue of the US socialist journal Against the Current will contain a Marxist critique of the ideas of William Julius Wilson. 21. Salim Muwakkil, "AIDS hits hardest at Blacks and Latinos," In These Times, August 19-September 1, 22. See Lyonora Williams, "Klansmen without robes," Guardian, November 25, 1987, pp.6-7. 23. See Frank Bardacke, "How Watsonville canning strikers won," Against the Current 2, No.3, May/June 1987, pp.15-20. News of anti-apartheid activities by US unions is regularly carried in the publication Labor 24. For example, see "Toward a Communist analysis of Black oppression," Line of March 2, No.1, July/ August, 1981, pp.21-88.
decade, with substantial results. Leading novelists in the US now include Toni Morrison and Alice Walker; both of these Black feminists promote Afro-American culture as a source of sustenance, pride and independence, significantly raising the cultural level of the country above the banality of Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow, not to mention mass-market hucksters like Harold Robbins. There is also increasing public interest in Latino film and theatre. Although mass cultural phenomena are complex and contradictory, with diverse effects depending on the context, there is no doubt that information and interest in the history and culture of peoples of color is more widespread than ever.
Patriarchal, European perspectives questioned
Among the most impressive culturallylinked struggles of people of color in the past year have been those on campuses across the nation. Student activists and faculty allies put forward in an impressively forceful and unified manner the demand for an end to Euro-American domination of the cultural life of the university. They advocated required courses in
" and the creation of or strengthening of independent programs in Afro-American, Native American, Asian American and Latino studies. Often these national demands were linked to international concerns, especially regarding US support of reactionary regimes in South Africa and tone, will be taken seriously - nor should they be — if they are not predicated on an
Anti-racism not primarily
La "Black" issue
Second, the complexity of these new developments suggests the necessity of an inprogram on the part of the left as to the history, dynamic, needs and demands of people of color in the US. Since the European invasion of the continent over 400 years ago, a massive disinformation campaign has been conducted by the news media, educational institutions and the culture industry to misinform people about cultural difference; to propagate biological theories of racial inferiority; to sew divisions among working people; and to instill the illusion of a possible assimilation to the racist order
As a result, not only Euro-Americans, but people of color themselves, need to participate in a fresh and updated historical review linked to political struggle. A unity of all people of color in alliance with the union movement and radical students is desirable, but cannot be achieved if the result is that the less numerous and materially weaker groups are subordinated and over-
Unity among people of color, and be-
USA tween people of color and their class allies, must be predicated on the recognition of differences as well as interests in common. Most significantly, it is no longer correct, if it ever was, to treat the anti-racist movement as primarily a "Black" issue, though Blacks have historically played a major role on the left and have been heavily proletarianized.
• Native Peoples, for example, have played a special part in the history of the nation and are presently linked to a hemispheric-wide revolt of indigenous
• "Asian American" is a term that refers to numerous groups with many different relations to the dominant society — Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, Korean-Americans and others.
• The Latino community is divided among Chicanos, Puerto Ricans (from the island as well as the mainland), CubanAmericans, recent refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico and elsewhere.
• There are also diverse Arab Americans, Haitians, people from India and other recent immigrants.
Teach-ins on racism and cultural diversity are now being organized mainly on campuses, but they can also be held in War," Cultural Survival Quarterly 11, No.3, 1987,
1987 COLLECTION OF
Central America.
Even within the ivory tower of the academic disciplines, the impact of this grow-
INTERNATIONAL VIEWPOINT ing assertion of cultural "difference"
and autonomy on the part of people of color is
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an issue of major contention. In the social sciences and humanities there now rage vitriolic and highly political debates about the appropriate methodologies for scholarly No respectable revolutionary's bookshelf is complete study. Liberals and conservatives unite on the side of the "Ethnicity school," which conflates people of color and white ethnics into a single category on the grounds that all citizens of the US are in some sense descended from "minorities." On the left stand adherents of an analysis according to categories of class, gender and race, in which Marxism figures prominently. Not only history and culture, but also psychology and the physical sciences are now coming under sharp criticism tor theorizing and present "facts" and "norms" that are actually ideological props facilitating the domination of patriarchal European
What are the implications of these new developments for the revolutionary left in the United States? First and foremost, they demand an orientation by all socialists toward active support on the front lines of the struggles - and the extension of these struggles into the places where socialist live and work. No criticism or suggestions, no matter how non-sectarian or friendly in without this readily accessible collection of the 1987 issues of IV, complete with the year's index. Supplies are limited, so rush your order in now! Send cheque or postal order for 160FF/ £15/$25 made out to PEC (add 20% if you would like it sent airmail) to: International Viewpoint, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, 93108, Montreuil, France. April 4, 1988 • #138 International Viewpoint
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