Posted June 24, 2015

      A democratic society protects not only political and civil but also social and economic rights, including the rights to housing, nutrition, education, health care, and cultural formation.  At a global level, a democratic world-system would respect the right of all nations to sovereignty, and it would provide support to the formerly colonized nations in their quest to attain the protection of the most important of human rights, the right to development.  These rights have been confirmed in important international documents, including declarations of the United Nations.  Having been affirmed by the representatives the nations and peoples of the earth, commitment to the protection of these rights is fundamental to what can be called universal human values.

     A society based on universal human values has been the historic demand of the African-American movement.  But this demand has been neither acknowledged nor addressed by white society or public discourse in the United States.  

      We have seen that in the aftermath of the civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, the African-American movement sought to move forward to the protection of social and economic rights and to the advocacy of a foreign policy based on cooperation with the formerly colonized peoples of the Third World.  But the nation turned to repression of the black movement, which had entered its black power and Black Nationalist stage (see “The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/23/2015).

     The inadequate protection of the social and economic rights of African-American in 1965 was a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation.  The civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965 signaled a national political will to end discrimination, but they did not address the poverty and inequality that were consequence of decades of discrimination.  

     What could have been done in the late 1960s to overcome the legacy of racial discrimination and address the protection of the social and economic rights of blacks?   In the first place, it was necessary to acknowledge and understand that critical decades had been lost.  In the South, the failure to protect the political and civil rights of the emancipated slaves and to distribute land to the freedmen meant that a black agricultural middle class could not emerge during the period 1867 to 1965.  In the North, the failure to provide equal employment opportunity in the expanding industrial economy in the period 1865 to 1964 meant that relatively good-paying jobs for persons with low levels of education were being taken by white immigrants from Europe rather than black migrants from the US South.  In the late 1960s, the US industrial expansion was coming to an end, and the nation was entering several decades of relative economic decline; and the world-economy itself was entering a period of sustained systemic crisis.

     The changing national and international economy of the late 1960s meant that the path of upward mobility that had been possible for the white European immigrants during the period 1865 to 1965 was not open to poor whites, blacks, Latinos, or indigenous people after 1965.  From that time forward, there would be few relatively good-paying jobs for youth with low levels of education.  Young people would have to attain higher levels of education in order to access employment opportunities in a “post-industrial” economy.  

    But such a model of upward mobility through educational attainment had not been the pattern of upward mobility for the white ethnic groups in the United States.  The white ethnic groups were formed by a great migratory wave during the period 1865 to 1925, coming from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe.  They were escaping conditions of displacement from land and impoverishment, and they were pulled by the industrial expansion of the United States, which was creating conditions of labor shortage.  As we observe the upward mobility of the white ethnics in the United States, we find that the pattern was not upward mobility through educational attainment, but upward mobility through relatively high-wage employment for the poorly educated.  The children of the European immigrants persistently had low levels of educational attainment, but through the formation of labor unions, they became a relatively well-paid labor force, in spite of low levels of education.  The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants, sons and daughters of poorly educated but relatively well-paid workers, performed much better in school, and many entered the middle class.  Thus, the white ethnic pattern of upward mobility involved improvement in the standard of living first, and improvement in educational attainment later.  This was possible because it occurred in the context of an expanding industrial economy.

     But African Americans, Latinos, and indigenous people were excluded from this prevailing pattern of upward mobility of 1865-1965.  In the late 1960s, black, Latino and indigenous poor would have had to accomplish upward mobility through educational attainment first, which had not been the historic pattern of upward mobility in the United States.  

      It was a challenge without precedent, and effective steps would have to involve measures without precedent.  A pre-condition was the national political will to attack the problem, and this was not present.  As a result of the influence of the African-American movement on public discourse and the advocacy of progressive sectors, a “War on Poverty” was proposed by the Johnson Administration.  But it was poorly conceived and inadequately funded.

     The necessary reflection and mobilization of political resources required taking seriously the two different proposals of the African-American movement.  As we have seen (“The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/23/2015), the prevailing tendency in the movement from 1966 to 1972 was Black Nationalism.  It proposed black control of black institutions, including the development of community control of schools, so that the local community would be free to adopt necessary measures to respond to the particular challenges that the public schools in poor urban sections confronted.  As we have seen, an experiment of this kind was developed in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of New York City, but it was brought to an and, principally as a result of the opposition of the New York City teachers’ union (see “Black community control” 5/5/2015).  What was needed was full national political support for projects of this kind, with freedom for teachers and administrators to be innovative, and with full necessary funding.

     The Poor People’s Campaign of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pointed in a different direction.  King’s vision of a coalition of black, white, Latino and indigenous poor was based on the premise that the national government can and should adopt policies and create programs that respond to the economic and social needs of the people.  It can, for example, construct housing and improve the transportation infrastructure, with the double purpose of improving housing and transportation for those in need as well as providing good-paying jobs for persons with low levels of education; and it can develop educational programs that are designed to respond to the particular needs of lower-class children.  

      But neither the direction of black power nor that of Dr. King was engaged by the nation in the late 1960s.  The African-American movement was brought to an end, silenced by the killing, incarceration, and exile of its leaders.  African-American dreams and hopes were again deferred.

       In the aftermath of the failure of the nation to address the protection of social and economic rights in the late 1960s, and in conjunction with structural changes in the US economy, there emerged by the 1980s what the African-American sociologist William J. Wilson described as socially isolated black lower class neighborhoods.  They emerged in the historic black sections of cities, and they came into being in part as a result of the outmigration of the black middle and working classes.  According to Wilson, black lower class neighborhoods were characterized by social isolation and separation from the mainstream of the US occupational system, and they had high levels of poverty, welfare dependency, youth joblessness, male joblessness, street crime, drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, and female-headed families (Wilson 1987).  

     By the 1980s, the nation and the world-system had turned to neoliberalism, characterized by the reduction of the role of the state and the dismantling of social programs designed to protect the interests and needs of the popular classes.  The national and global war against the poor had begun.  The African-American movement agenda for the protection of social and economic rights and for a democratic world-system had been discarded into the dustbin of history.
   
     The failure of the nation to address the issue of race and the legacy of racial discrimination is a dimension of a larger failure of the nation to engage the demands of the popular movements, a phenomenon in part rooted in the limitations of the movements themselves, a theme which we will address in subsequent posts.


Bibliography

McKelvey, Charles.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.

Wilson, William J.  1987.  The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.  

Key words: Emanuel AME Church, race, race relations, racial violence, racial divide, racial division, racism, symbolic racism, affirmative action, poverty, lower class, Civil Rights Act, Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Black Nationalism, the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Jackson, popular coalition

Posted June 26, 2015

     There is no doubt that racism continues to exist in the United States.  It is a new and more subtle form of racism that is adapted to the political realities of the post-Civil Rights Movement era.  In contrast to pre-1965 racism, which believed that blacks are biologically inferior, the new racism prefers a cultural explanation, maintaining that economic inequality between blacks and whites is rooted in cultural differences.  The new racism is more flexible, recognizing the high intelligence of some blacks, but believing that blacks in general are less intelligent and less motivated, particularly in the lower class, where black cultural influences are pervasive.  In addition, the new racism expresses itself in the form of viewpoints that ostensibly have nothing to do with race.  The attitudes of many whites toward the role of government in addressing social inequalities and toward crime can be reflections of a belief in the inferiority of black culture (Bobo et al. 1997; Bobo and Smith 1998; Bonilla-Silva 2001, 2003; Edsell y Edsell 1991).

     Going beyond what has been written by scholars on the new form of racism, I would submit that a subtle form of racism is at the root of the dismissal of the critique and proposals of the African-American movement (see “The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/20/2015).  There is prevalent in white society not only a pejorative view of black culture but also a dismissal of the forms of thought that emerge from the black experience.  This dismissal prevents an encounter with black thought, which would lead to awareness that African-Americans have formulated a more advanced understanding of structures of domination and the meaning of democracy.  As a result, the fundamental epistemological insight that wisdom comes from below is beyond the horizon of white society, undermining the possibility that whites could learn from blacks as the nation and the world confront various crises. 

    If racism is alive in a new form, then it is logical to think that discrimination against blacks and other minorities continues to exist, in spite of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  And it follows that commitment to democracy requires adoption of a program that takes “affirmative action” to nullify the effects of the new and more subtle form of racism.  This gave rise to what William J. Wilson described as a shift in government policy after 1970 from a focus on individual equality of opportunity to an emphasis on ensuring that minorities are adequately represented in certain positions in government, employment and education (1987:114).

      In spite of the existence of racism in a new form and in spite of evident need for affirmative action, I believe that the emphasis on racism and affirmative action has been a serious strategic error of progressives in the United States since 1965.  My view is no doubt shaped by my experiences.  The grandchild of immigrants from Ireland and Italy, my fundamental social perspective was shaped by Black Nationalism in the early 1970s, specifically at the Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies in Chicago.  Beginning in the 1990s, I began a period of study and living in socialist Cuba, where I have encountered the Cuban perspective, which is a synthesis of Third World national liberation and Marxism-Leninism.  In Cuba, I also have had the opportunity for observation of revolutionary processes unfolding today in Latin America and the Third World, which have been extensively observed by Cuban journalists and intellectuals.  From this vantage point, discussion of racism and affirmative action seems limited, and not politically effective.

     As William J. Wilson observed in 1987, affirmative action is limited in what in accomplishes.  It benefits middle class blacks, but it does not provide support for lower class blacks, who have greater need for support.  Wilson contends that “the race-specific policies emanating from the civil rights revolution, although beneficial to more advantaged blacks (i.e., those with higher income, greater education and training, and more prestigious occupations), do little for those who are truly disadvantaged” (1987:110).  Moreover, Wilson maintains that it is difficult to marshal and maintain political support for programs that target particular groups, whether they be minorities, women, or persons with low-income.  Observing the different kinds of programs that exist in Western European societies, he maintains that universal programs, which benefit virtually everyone, have much stronger political constituency (1987:118).

     We must keep in mind that proposals in defense of popular needs do not occur in a political and ideological vacuum.  They occur in a context in which an elite class seeks to maintain its power and privileges, and it is prepared to exploit any divisions that emerge among the popular classes, including generating distortions and ideologies with respect to programs that target specific groups.  And since 1968, the US elite has been threatened by crises: a relative US decline in production and commerce as well as the sustained structural crisis of the world-system.  In response to its increasingly uncertain position, the US elite has become more and more aggressive in its ideological manipulation of the popular classes and sectors.  Rather than supporting affirmative action as a limited and necessary reform measure, the powers that be have attacked affirmative action as “reverse discrimination,” generating opposition in white society.  In the context of these political and ideological dynamics, affirmative action has negative political consequences.

      Taking a cue from the movements that are unfolding in Latin America today, it seems to me that programs that benefit specific targeted groups can have political viability only if they are part of a larger project for social change, which includes a program for the political education of the people with respect to a number of national and global issues.  Such a comprehensive political project has not been developed by progressive forces in the United States, as I will discuss in the next post.

References

Bobo, Lawrence, James R. Kleugel, and Ryan A. Smith.  1997.  “Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Anti-Black Ideology” in Steven A, Tuch and Jack K. Martin, Eds., Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change.  Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publisher.

Bobo, Lawrence D. and Ryan A. Smith.  1998.  “From Jim Crow Racism to Laissez-Faire Racism: The Transformation of Racial Attitudes” in Wendy F. Katkin, Ned Landsman, and Andrea Tyree, Eds., Beyond Pluralism: The Conception of Groups and Group Identities in America (Pp. 182-220).  Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo.  2001.  White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era.  Boulder: Lynne Reinner Publishers.

__________.  2003.  Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States.  Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Edsell, T. and M. Edsell.  1991.  “When the Official Subject is Presidential Politics, Taxes, Welfare, Crime, Rights, or Values . . . the Real Subject is Race,” Atlantic Monthly (May 1991), Pp. 53-86.

Wilson, William J.  1987.  The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner City, the Underclass, and Public Policy.  Chicago:  University of Chicago Press.

Key words: Emanuel AME Church, race, race relations, racial violence, racial divide, racial division, racism, symbolic racism, affirmative action, poverty, lower class, Civil Rights Act, Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Black Nationalism, the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Jackson, popular coalition

Posted June 27, 2015

​     Dr. King pointed us in the right direction.  In 1968, King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference began work on the Poor People’s Campaign, a protest in Washington to focus on economic justice for the poor.  The campaign was formed by the poor of various ethnic groups: blacks, whites, Mexican-Americans, and Native Americans.  The strategy was to focus on the protection of social and economic rights for all, regardless of ethnicity.  In this strategy, King was seeking alliance on the basis of common economic interest, giving secondary consideration to the type of alliance that King has sought to form in the early 1960s, which often involved whites in powerful places, and which King called a “coalition of conscience.” 

     Following King’s assassination on April 3, 1968, the campaign proceeded. It established Resurrection City, a temporary community on the grounds of the Washington monument, and the young SCLC minister Jesse Jackson was named its mayor.  However, following the closing of Resurrection City, the “Poor People´s Campaign” lost force.    
     In 1979, with the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Iran, the national mood took a decisive turn to the Right, beginning what Jesse Jackson described as a “long, dark night of reaction.”  Jackson responded to the national turn to the Right in his presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988.  Resurrecting and expanding King’s concept of a multi-ethnic coalition among the poor, Jackson sought to attain the protection of social and economic rights through the formation of a “Rainbow Coalition” of workers, farmers, students, small business people, women, blacks, Latinos, and indigenous people.  In foreign affairs, influenced by King and Black Nationalist critiques of the world-system, Jackson proposed a policy of North-South cooperation.  

     However, the Rainbow Coalition was not developed as an alternative mass organization, functioning as nation-wide educational and political organization.  I was a Jackson delegate at the Democratic National Convention in 1988, where plans were formulated for the development of the Rainbow Coalition as a mass popular organization.  In my home state of South Carolina, we held several meetings for the purposing of establishing the Rainbow Coalition at the state and county level.  However, we were not able to do it.  During his visit to Presbyterian College to give a public lecture, I talked briefly with Rev. Jackson about the problem, and he appeared unable to help.  In the end, the Rainbow Coalition was not developed as a nationwide mass organization.

      We need to retake and develop further the King-Jackson idea of a popular coalition.  Above all, we must understand that the coalition would seek to take power.  King had not yet arrived to understand that it is a question of the people taking power.  At the time when his life was cut short, he continued to be oriented to the bringing of popular pressure on those in power, rather than the taking of power by the people.  Jackson, on the other hand, understood that it is a question of taking power.  But he did not fully grasp that the popular taking of power involves more than a delegate of the people occupying the White House, even if the president brought to office by popular movement is committed to the people and is capable of invoking popular mobilizations in defense of presidential proposals.  The popular taking of power requires the development of an alternative political party that also has significant representation in the Congress and that is continually working on the political education of the people.

      A reconstituted and more advanced popular coalition that seeks power would stand on the shoulders of giants.  Popular movements have emerged throughout the history of the republic, formed by artisans, farmers, workers, women, blacks, Mexican-Americans, students, ecologists and immigrants.  However, these historic popular movements have been characterized by divisions and errors, which have prevented the emergence of a popular coalition capable of taking power.

     Of the various popular movements, the African-American movement has been the most advanced, advocating the protection of the social and economic rights of all citizens and the development of a foreign policy based on respect for the sovereignty of the nations of the Third World (see “The unresolved issue of race in the USA” 6/23/2015).  In the period 1966 to 1972, the movement evolved to a Black Nationalist stage, during which it formulated a penetrating and insightful analysis of the world-system, demonstrating the colonial foundations of the system.  However, black power and Black Nationalism had negative consequences with respect to the development of a popular revolutionary movement in the United States.  If a revolution is to take power in the name of the people, it must have the united support of the people, who have overcome divisions that have been cultivated by the forces of domination and reaction, such as racial divisions.  Black power had the consequence of deepening the political and cultural differences between blacks and whites, and undermining the possibility for united political action.  

      The workers’ movement in the United States developed in conjunction with the industrial expansion of the United States of 1865 to 1965.  Emerging in the context of a culture that excluded blacks, it never was able to overcome the racial divide.  To some extent constrained by red-baiting, the workers’ movement evolved to trade union consciousness and to a labor aristocracy in the hegemonic core nation of the capitalist world-economy.  Its conservative orientation distanced it not only from the black movement but also the student/anti-war movement of the late 1960s.

     The US student movement reached its height from 1965 to 1970.  As a result of compulsory conscription in the armed forces and the failure of the US imperialist war in Vietnam, the student movement became an anti-war movement.  It was sympathetic to the black power movement, and it formulated anti-imperialist critiques of US foreign policy.  Moreover, reacting to the irrelevant curricular design of the bureaucratized university, it demanded greater student voice in university affairs, expecting that this would lead to a curriculum that was more oriented to education for social justice.  However, student leaders had few older and more experienced role models, due to a generation gap that alienated students of the 1960s from both the anti-communism and the conventional Marxism of their elders.  The result was that the student movement was characterized by superficiality in analysis, infantile and insensitive strategies, and idealist expectations concerning the effects of protest.  When the draft ended and the Vietnam War wound down, the student movement rapidly dissipated.

      The women’s movement exploded on the social scene in the period 1968 to 1970.  It was characterized by penetrating historical analysis of the history of patriarchy since the agricultural revolution and by a critique of legal and cultural forms of gender domination, discrimination, and exclusion.  But in the United States, it was conflictive, sometimes insensitive to other forms of domination rooted in colonialism and labor exploitation.  It thus contributed to divisions among the people in the critical period of 1968 to 1972.  Ultimately, the women’s movement would have more impact on prevailing cultural norms and values than the other popular movements.  Women have arrived to positions of power in political and economic institutions of the nation and the world.  But women who have arrived to positions of authority do not bring with them a feminist or popular perspective; they contribute to the reproduction of existing power relations.

     In 1970, the ecology movement emerged as an important voice on the social landscape.  It tended to be oriented to environmental issues, leaving aside questions of colonialism and labor.  Like the women’s movement, it expressed itself in a form that contributed to divisions among the people.  It ultimately would have great impact on popular consciousness in the nation and the world, but it has been unable to change sufficiently the ecologically destructive policies of governments, in spite of the evident danger that environmental degradation poses to the survival of humanity.

      In the development of a reconstituted popular coalition that seeks political power, the historical errors and limitations of the various popular movements would have to be overcome.  As I observe revolutionary popular movements in Latin America, I see that they have been able to overcome division and to develop a comprehensive and integrated popular movement that has taken power in several nations and has transformed the political reality of the region.  This has been accomplished in spite of the opposition of national and international elites, and in spite of the fact that in 1995 such gains seemed impossible.

      Observing what has occurred in Latin America, it seems to me possible to accomplish a similar ideological and political transformation in the United States.   It is necessary to do so, and this necessity is a factor that establishes the possibility.  Moreover, a number of conditions favor the development of a renewed popular movement that seeks to take power.  These conditions include a widespread perception among our people that those in power are not committed to defending the needs of the people.  This perception is rooted in the conduct of the elite, which for the past thirty-five years has supported the profits of corporations over the needs of people and nature.  Those who are informed about global dynamics should be able to de-legitimate the elite and facilitate the bringing to power of a popular project with an alternative vision for humanity.

       It is often said that third political parties do not work in the United States.  But this is not entirely true.  In two previous important historic movements in the history of the nation, alternative political parties were successfully formed.  The first was in the earliest years of the republic, when so-called democratic and republic societies were formed, leading to the formation of the Democratic-Republican Party that elected Thomas Jefferson and that displaced the Whig Party that had been dominated by the elite.  And in the 1850s, the Republican Party was formed with an abolitionist platform and elected Abraham Lincoln.  It is true that a number of third parties in the twentieth century did not have success.  But the lesson that should be drawn is that third parties do not work, if they have a theoretical analysis and a platform that limit their potential constituency.  But a third party formed by a popular coalition that addresses the challenges that humanity confronts in an informed and unambiguous way, and that is dedicated to the political education of the people, would be able to transform political and ideological conditions.

     As we have seen (“On racism and affirmative action” 6/26/2015), many whites are racist in subtle and even blatant ways.  Let us attempt to move beyond racism by offering to the people an alternative that promises protection of their social and economic rights.  Let the people see that we have committed our lives and our honor to the fulfillment of this promise.  

     The peoples of the world are in movement.  They seek an alternative world-system based on universal human values.  They look with hope to the people of the United States, who, they remember, brought an end to the imperialist war in Vietnam.  The peoples of the world will overwhelmingly and enthusiastically come to the aid and support of a revolutionary popular movement in the United States.

Key words: Emanuel AME Church, race, race relations, racial violence, racial divide, racial division, racism, symbolic racism, affirmative action, poverty, lower class, Civil Rights Act, Poor People’s Campaign, Martin Luther King, Black Nationalism, the Rainbow Coalition, Jesse Jackson, popular coalition

     Rodney Coates, Director of Black World Studies at Miami University of Ohio, has distributed on the Critical Sociological Discourse list an article by Lisa Brock, “Rage Against the Narrative: ‘I don't do diversity, I do triage.’”  Brock is the Senior Editor of Praxis Center and Academic Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College.  The article has stimulated my reflection on race and the university in relation to a revolutionary popular coalition. This blog post is part of a series of posts on the need for popular coalition in the United States, the possibility for which is being demonstrated in Latin America today.  See “A just, democratic & sustainable world-system” 1/12/2016; “The twelve practices of socialism” 1/14/2016; “Popular democratic socialist revolution” 1/15/2016; “Lessons of socialism for the USA” 1/18/2016; “Race and Revolution” 1/19/2016; “Gender and revolution” 1/21/2016; “Gay rights and revolution” 1/22/2016.

     Brock maintains that at Historically White Colleges and Universities (HWCUs), also known as Predominately White Institutions (PWIs), students of color experience a variety of psychic hurts from the “micro-aggressions,” so called because they are not intended to hurt, of white students in dining rooms, dorms, and classrooms.  This dynamic among students occurs in the context of an institutional “white blindness,” in which the curriculum is Eurocentric, and peoples of color are invisible.  The white culture of the PWIs has not changed in essence since integration; knowledge of the history and lived realities of peoples of color is not an integral part of its social world.  Students of color are expected to assimilate to the institution, rather than the institution transforming its racist assumptions and practices.  

     The hurt, frustration and anger of students of color at PWIs has been a problem for years, and the universities have launched diversity initiatives.  Brock observes that the diversity initiatives have had limited impact, and this has been a source of frustration for all those who cast their hope in them.  The diversity initiatives do not respond to the roots of the problem; they are more oriented to presenting an image of the university as characterized by diversity rather than a transformation of racist practices.  As a result of the failure of diversity initiatives during the last twenty years, the narrative of diversity has become bankrupt, Brock maintains.

     I would argue that, in order to transform the racist foundation of PWIs, white faculty, administrators and students would have to experience a transformation in understanding.  The possibility for white transformation was provided by the African-American movement, with its alternative system of values and of the selection and organization of historical facts, insofar as whites personally encountered the movement and took seriously its insights.  A few whites, including myself, were transformed by the movement in its Black Nationalist stage of 1966-72.  But the great majority of whites did not encounter the movement; white society merely made concessions to the black movement.  

     Let us review the basic facts.  In 1964 and 1965, white society conceded the granting of political and civil rights, responding to the Civil Rights stage of the movement from 1955 to 1965, but it did so with equivocation and with tolerance of violence by white extremists. In the period 1966-72, white society rejected movement demands for the protection of the social and economic rights of all citizens and for special attention to the social and economic needs of popular sectors that had been historically excluded.  And it ignored the anti-imperialist critique by the movement of US imperialist foreign policy.  The African-American movement was brought to an end in the early 1970s through systemic police repression of Black Nationalist leaders and organizations.  As an epilogue, white society rejected the presidential candidacies of Jesse Jackson, whose proposed “Rainbow Coalition” was exactly what the nation needed to redeem its soul.  The concept of the Rainbow Coalition was a more advanced reformulation of Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, and Jackson’s proposed foreign policy of “North-South cooperation” was a diplomatic reformulation of the Black Nationalist anti-imperialist critique (see McKelvey 1994).

     As a result of the lost historic opportunity for a transformation of white understanding, today it is the university that must fulfill the role of enabling a transformation of white understanding, in fulfillment of its central mission of education.  But Historically White Colleges and Universities are structurally unable to do more than diversity as image. They are unable to educate in a form that emancipates from false assumptions, limited values, and distorted collective memory. Transformative education is an interdisciplinary and integral project written from below, whereas the structures of higher education provide fragmented disciplines sanctioned from above.  The segmentation of knowledge of society into the distinct disciplines of history, economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology occurred in the aftermath, and as a rejection, of Marx’s reformulation of the science of history as a synthesis of German philosophy and British political economy, written from the vantage point of the worker (see McKelvey 1991).  Marx’s formulation was a highly advanced integral approach to the knowledge of society, but it represented a challenge to the elite, so it had to be cast aside.  In the United States, the consolidation of the segmentation of knowledge coincided with significant donations to universities from the “robber barons,” as they were consolidating their control over concentrated industry and banking (Josephson 2011:315-16, 324-25).  Later, during the tumultuous period of 1955-72, interdisciplinary majors, such as black studies and women’s studies, were developed, but the new programs were compelled to adapt to the segmentation of the bureaucratized university.  If the pursuit of knowledge in the university reflects the perspective of white society, shaped by the interests of the few powerful whites, then there is no reasonable possibility for a transformation of white understanding in the universities.  White blindness is entrenched; PWIs, as they presently are structured, are unredeemable.  We will continue indefinitely with white insensitivity and failure to understand, with protests by black students and their few white supporters, and with diversity initiatives that only seek to present an image of diversity.  (On the limitations of the structures and epistemological assumptions of the university, see Wallerstein 1999a; 1999b; 2006:59-65).

       Given the impossibility of meaningful change in the universities as they are presently structured, we can only conclude that a revolutionary transformation of the structures of US society is necessary, through the coming to power of an alternative political party that acts for the interests of the people.  Once in power, a political party of the people can adopt measures that would create an environment that would give support to those university faculty and students who understand the need for an integral education written from below.  Such enlightened faculty and students presently exist in significant numbers in US colleges and universities, but their efforts to change the university are constrained by the mentality of white blindness, by the weight of the bureaucracy, and by the awareness of what the powers-that-be are prepared to support.  But an alternative direction from above, supported by the people, would enable progressive faculty and students to lead their colleagues in a transformation of the university.

      Initial steps toward the transformation of the university can begin now, prior to the triumph of the popular revolution, but anticipating its triumph.  Faculty and students can become members of an alternative popular revolutionary party.  They can develop study groups and people’s universities, providing readings that succinctly explain fundamental historical facts, understanding of which is necessary for responsible citizenship, including: (1) the historical development of the world-economy, enabling understanding of slavery, US ascent and decline, and immigration in a global context; (2) the popular revolutions of the world, including Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador; (3) the movements of peoples of color, women and workers in the United States; (4) the need for changes in patterns of production and consumption in order to sustain the natural environment; and (5) the formulation of universal human values by the peoples and nations of the world, which are codified in the declarations of the United Nations and various international organizations.   And faculty and students can organize actions.  The actions should include the demands of black faculty and students for more faculty members of color and for the transformation of the Eurocentric curriculum, not with the expectation that such demands would be meaningfully addressed, but in order to educate the people concerning the character of a truly democratic university.  But they also should include protests with respect to issues beyond the university: police violence; immigration; neoliberalism; wars of aggression and US military bases; and support for particular nations under siege, such as Cuba, Palestine, and Venezuela.  In general, the tactics should not be disruptive; they should involve activities such as demonstrations or community service.  Disruptive tactics, such as strikes or road blockages, should only be used when they can mobilize the support of the majority, because disruptive activities by a few are viewed by the people as a few undisciplined malcontents behaving badly.  In the context of the political culture of the United States, actions should always be non-violent, without exception.  The participation together by white and black students and faculty in study groups and actions would help black students overcome the psychic scars resulting from white blindness, and it would enable white students to overcome alienation from their true selves.  

     Such revolutionary transformation of the university has occurred in Cuba.  In the 1920s and 1930s, and again in the 1950s, students and student organizations were actively involved in protests calling for reform of the university and an end to the corruption of the neocolonial republic.  They protested US imperialism, and they called for a literacy campaign in Cuba, like those that had been established by the Russian and Mexican revolutions.  In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of his entrance into the University of Havana, Fidel declared that he became revolutionary at the university.  Fidel’s transformation at the university was a combination of different influences: the courses and reading materials of a few progressive professors; his active involvement in political activities of student organizations; and his reading of the works of Marx, Engels and Lenin at the library of the Cuban communist party (see “Julio A. Mella and the student movement” 7/8/2014; “Fidel becomes revolutionary at the university” 9/11/2014).

      After the triumph of the revolution, the University of Havana reformed itself, with the support of the revolutionary government, but carried out by the professors themselves, committed to the revolution. It redesigned the curricula in history and philosophy, providing an integral and global view of human history and the history of the nation, describing structures of domination and popular movements seeking social transformation.  It established various interdisciplinary research centers, such as the Center for the Study of the United States and the Center for the Study of the International Economy.  It encouraged each center and each department to hold an annual colloquium, so that there was interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty on a regular basis. Rather than stressing publications in reviews, the university gave priority to faculty participation in the colloquia of the centers and departments.  After fifty years, the results are impressive.  At international conferences, the advanced understanding of Cuban professors is evident.  

      For their part, Cuban students continue the tradition of revolutionary activism.  The University Student Federation (FEU for its initials in Spanish), established by Julio Antonio Mella in 1922, is a very active organization.  Nearly all university students in Cuba are members, and each department elects their delegates, who in turn elect leaders at higher levels.  Recently, Cuban television aired an hour-long interview with the President of FEU, Jennifer Bello Martínez, who comes from the eastern province of Holguin.  She professed her commitment and that of FEU to the revolution.  She described her deep admiration for Mella, and she expressed wonder that he had accomplished so much in his short life (he was 25 when he was assassinated).  When asked of her reaction to the charge by some that the young generation today lacks revolutionary values, she responded, “Inasmuch as the generation of the revolution has repeatedly expressed its confidence in the youth of Cuba, we have no option but to respond faithfully to the confidence that they have placed in us.”

      A university transformed.  A university system designed to accommodate the interests of the global elite and their national accomplices now has a different intellectual, social and political environment.  This transformation was one dimension of a social transformation of all of the institutions of the society.  It was a transformation rooted in the historic struggles of the people, which enabled the formation of leaders.  When those leaders proposed to the people a project of revolutionary transformation, the people authorized them to speak and act on its behalf and supported them in all necessary forms.  The leaders, in the name of the people, took power, and they have delivered on the promises made.    

       Revolutionary change is possible.  We, the people of the United States, must cast aside the cynicism that serves the interests of the elite.  We must have faith in the essential goodness of our people and in the future of humanity.  We have our own history of popular movements, which provides our foundation.  And we live in an historic moment in which the unsustainability of the established world-system is each day more evident.  We must form an alternative revolutionary political party of the people that seeks to take power and effect social transformation, in the university and in other institutions.

​References
 
Josephson, Matthew.  2011.  The Robber Barons: The Great American Capitalists, 1861-1901.  New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers.  Originally published in 1934 by Harcourt, Brace, and Company.

McKelvey, Charles.  1991.  Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science.  New York:  Greenwood Press. 
 
__________.  1994.  The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition. Bayside, New York: General Hall.
 
Wallerstein, Immanuel.  1999a.  “Eurocentrism and its Avatars: The Dilemmas of Social Science” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press.  

__________.  1999b.  “Social Science and the Quest for a Just Society” in The End of the World as We Know It:  Social Science for the Twenty-First Century.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. 

__________.  2006.  European Universalism: The Rhetoric of Power.  New York: The New Press.

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Key words: race, diversity, university, revolution

     We are reflecting in a series of posts on the need for and the possibility of a popular coalition in the United States that would seek revolutionary transformation, involving the taking the political power and making structural changes in various institutions of the nation, so that they would respond to the needs, rights and interests of the popular sectors (“A just, democratic & sustainable world-system” 1/12/2016; “The twelve practices of socialism” 1/14/2016; “Popular democratic socialist revolution” 1/15/2016; “Lessons of socialism for the USA” 1/18/2016).  In this post, I would like to reflect on the issue of race in this context.

     The granting of political and civil rights to Africa descendants in the 1960s occurred in a form in which white society did not encounter and come to understand the African-American perspective.  There was not a move toward understanding, but merely the making of concessions. White society did not grasp that the granting of these rights came 100 years too late with respect to the possibilities for the economic development of the black community, and specific government policies would have to be developed to compensate for this fact.  Nor did white society grasp the implications of the anti-imperialist components of the black power discourse, which pointed to the need for a world-system in which the sovereign rights of Third World nations would be respected, if the promise of democracy were to prevail in the world as a whole. Continuing to look at race and the world from a limited white-centered perspective, subtle forms of racism endured and have had various manifestations up to the present day.

     But beyond the survival of white racism in a less blatant form, the issue of race has not been managed well by the movement itself.  To proclaim that white society is characterized by subtle racism, although entirely true, has not been an effective political strategy in the post-1965 era.  Since racism has become more subtle, most whites are not aware that they are infected by it, and they receive the proclamation as an unjust accusation.  It therefore provokes negative reaction, resentment, and hostility.  A far more effective strategy would be to leave the question of subtle racism aside and to seek political alliance on the basis of common interests that both whites and blacks have, as professionals, businesspersons, workers, farmers, persons who are fearful of unemployment or experience intermittent unemployment, or persons who find it difficult to pay for necessities.  As a result of the fact that blatant racism is no longer socially acceptable, such political alliance is much more possible today than in the past.  And in the context of working together on common interests, a process of personal encounter may often arise, and whites would begin to move beyond subtle racism.  

     A word on affirmative action.  When I first heard, in the late 1960s, about a program of affirmative action to ensure equal treatment of blacks and women who possess equal qualifications for employment and education, I was taken aback at its limited intentions.  It does nothing to address the social and economic conditions that limit opportunities to attain credentials for employment.  In spite of its limitations, I defended affirmative action for years in my classroom teaching in conservative church-related colleges in the South and Midwest.  I found a strong resistance to it among my white students, even white women, who displayed in their arguments subtle forms of racism.  But the subtle racism aside, they also argued against special treatment for any group, maintaining that equal treatment is the foundation of democracy.  It seems to me that a difficulty with affirmative action is the absence of other new initiatives that protect the working class and the poor, who have been abandoned since the 1970s.  In such a political context, affirmative action is going to be perceived as unfair by whites, especially white workers who are living below the poverty line.  Promoting a program of affirmative action in the absence of a comprehensive project to protect the social and economic rights of all is exactly what you would want to do if your goal is to increase white resentment.  But our goal should be to reduce subtle forms of white racism, and to protect the social and economic rights of all.

     Like the United States, Cuba has a long history of African slavery, abolition, and decades of racial segregation.  But there is a basic difference between Cuba and the United States with respect to race.  In the late nineteenth century, Cuban blacks and whites were coming together in a popular movement in opposition to the Cuban bourgeoisie, Spanish colonialism, and emerging US imperialism, a unity that continued in the popular struggles during the neocolonial republic; in contrast, in the United States during the late nineteenth century, the political-economic-social system of Jim Crow was being established and constitutionally affirmed.  So Cuba for decades, before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, had been more advanced than the United States with respect to race.  Nevertheless, the Cuban revolutionary leadership discerned that race was a potentially divisive issue, and they above all desired the unity of the people, so that the revolution could effectively struggle against powerful domestic and international enemies.  So rather than affirmative action for blacks and women, they adopted a policy of aggressive state action in the protection of the social and economic rights of all, with the intention that this strategy would ultimately overcome inequalities between blacks and whites and between men and women.  Since the 1960s, Cuba has not eliminated all forms of racial and gender inequality, but they have done far better on these issues than has the United States, and one does not find in Cuba an iota of resentment toward the attainments of women and blacks, for the revolution has meant advances not only for these popular sectors, but for all.

       An anecdote on affirmative action.  A couple of years ago a retired Cuban woman professor was giving a presentation on “Women in Cuba” to an international group of professors that I had organized for educational activities.  She was describing the phenomenon in Cuba of the “feminization of education,” where more women than men were entering higher education as administrators, professors and students. She noted that with respect to admissions for medical education, a highly prestigious field in Cuba, an affirmative action program was developed in the 1980s in order to give support to men, whose admission rate was lower.  But the women protested, saying that the men have the same opportunity to study and prepare themselves for admission, and they should be admitted on the same basis as women, without any consideration for gender enrollment.  And so the revolutionary government, conceding to the perception of the women that it was unfair, eliminated the affirmative action program after only one year.  Now I ask, if young Cuban women, socialized all their lives in the socialist values of social consciousness, perceive affirmative action as unfair, how are white men in the United States, who have not been formed in values of social consciousness, going to feel?

    In the late 1960s, there were those who were advocating an approach to social change based on class.  In their view, white and blacks should come together on the basis of common class interests, mostly conceived as a working class.  But this was not a sound conception.  Firstly, the class analysis of the 1960s was rooted in a classic Marxist view that gave priority to class exploitation over colonial domination.  As such, it was divisive, for it was perceived correctly by blacks as diminishing the significance of centuries of colonial domination and as ignoring Third World struggles for national liberation.  It was a view, moreover, that tended to reduce racial difference to insignificance, when in fact in the United States blacks and whites live in different social worlds and have different perceptions, values, languages and cultures.  

     In contrast to the class analysis advocated by some Leftist organizations in the 1960s, today there are some who advocate a species of identity politics, based on one’s identity as a women, black, Latino(a), Native American, Asian American, or gay or lesbian.  But this formulation excludes people who do not pertain to or do not desire to identify with any of the groups, and thus it has limited appeal, and it plants divisions among the people.  It is an approach that underestimates the importance of unity among all of the people, in light of powerful enemies whose interests are opposed to a project that protects the rights of the people.  It is an approach that one would advocate if one wanted to sow differences among our people and undermine the unity of the people.
     
       What I am suggesting is neither the priority of class over race; nor the priority of racial, ethnic, or gender identity.  What I am suggesting is the formation of popular coalition, a political alliance of different sectors of the popular classes, sectors that include workers, professionals, businesspersons, merchants, farmers, women, blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.  Any one of these can be the basis of distinct ethnic, gender, class and occupational identities and cultures.  Such identities are fine and good, if people have them, and they can actively participate in the activities that are organized by and for such groups.  But the forming of a popular coalition is another matter.  It is a political alliance among the different popular sectors, constructed on the foundation of common interests and needs.  The popular coalition must be based on mutual respect, in spite of cultural differences and differences in life-styles and beliefs. Such mutual respect is likely to be more formal at first, but it will become more genuine as the coalition becomes a political force and attains concrete gains in defense of the needs of the people.

      A socialist project in the United States should advocate cultural pluralism and the preservation of cultural diversity, including languages and unique philosophies, as well as special attention to the just treatment of members of racial and ethnic groups that have been historically excluded and especially impacted by the neoliberal project. It can maintain affirmative action programs for racial and ethnic groups and women as a component of this commitment to a multicultural society with full equality.  But such an approach to race and ethnicity should be part of a comprehensive program that is clearly and fully committed to the social and economic rights of all, so that all will feel that the unfolding popular national project has their needs in mind.

Posted December 13, 2013
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    Toussaint sought common ground between blacks and whites and cooperation between the global North and South.  He understood that mutual cooperation could only be based on a foundation in which blacks possessed military strength, and to this end he had formed a black revolutionary army and led it in successful campaigns against French and English troops.  But having attained a position of strength, the question becomes: What should be done with the power obtained through force of arms?  Here is where Toussaint sought cooperation, and he favored a policy of conciliation rather than vengeance. 

      Toussaint’s policy of conciliation toward whites was expressed in a number of different contexts: he opposed vengeful violence, and he adopted concrete measures to protect whites; he promised full rights as French citizens to whites and mulattoes who were faithful to the Republic; after the British were expelled, he granted amnesty to white proprietors who had cooperated with the British, as long as they had not fought with the British ranks; and he invited white émigrés back to the colony, on the condition that they take an oath of fidelity (James 1989:201, 204, 215)

     For Toussaint, the conciliatory policy toward whites was strategic.  Whites were necessary as a counterweight to the mulattoes, who sought independence under their exclusive control. And they were necessary for their education and administrative skills, taking into account the limited education and political formation of the people, a legacy of slavery (James 1989:215).  C.L.R. James writes: “He knew that these owners of property . . . [were] . . . utterly without principles except in so far as these helped to preserve their plantations.  But they had the knowledge, education and experience which the colony needed if it was to be restored to prosperity. . . .  They had culture, which only a section of the Mulattoes had and none of the slaves.  Toussaint therefore treated them with the utmost forbearance, being helped by an unwarped character which abhorred the spirit of revenge and useless bloodshed of any kind.  ‘No reprisals, no reprisals’ was his constant adjuration to his officers after every campaign.  It was their plantations these whites wanted and he gave them their plantations, always ready to forget their treachery if they would work the land” (1938:156).  James further observes that Toussaint “guarded his power and the rights of the labourers by an army overwhelmingly black.  But within that wall he encouraged all to come back, Mulattoes and whites.  The policy was both wise and workable” (1938:261).

     Most blacks were not in agreement with the policy of conciliation.  James believes that the policy was correct, but that Toussaint took for granted support from the masses of blacks, and he therefore did not make a sufficient effort to explain why the policy was necessary in the long run.  Toussaint was much more oriented to convincing whites to participate in the new society and to convincing Bonaparte that he would protect the property of the plantation owners.  Toussaint’s policy of racial conciliation, combined with the maintenance of capitalist export-oriented agriculture, led to insurrection from below.  In the eyes of some, Toussaint was too moderate; they wanted to see more radical change (James 1989:262, 283-88).  This division in the black revolution damaged its prospects for success.

     But Toussaint was right.  Nationalization of the plantations would have led to white emigration and the aggressive hostility of the global powers, leaving the nation in a position of trying to develop agriculture without sufficient trained staff and without the international commerce necessary for technical support and for markets.  On the other hand, the parceling of the plantations into small subsistence plots would mean that there would be little possibility for economic and cultural development.  The formation of national and international alliances was necessary.

     Toussaint saw the Jacobin values of the French Revolution as providing a foundation for a practical alliance with France that would facilitate economic and social development.  “What revolutionary France signified was perpetually on his lips, in public statements, in his correspondence, in the spontaneous intimacy of private conversation . . . .  It was not only the framework of his mind.  No one else was so conscious of its practical necessity in the social backwardness and primitive conditions of life around him. . . .  His unrealistic attitude to the former masters, at home and abroad, spring not from any abstract humanitarianism or loyalty, but from a recognition that they alone had what San Domingo society needed” (James 1938:290).

        We would not today use the language that C.L.R. James employed, writing in 1938, when he describes blacks as lacking in culture.  We today are more sensitive to the fact that all people have culture, which is expressed in popular language, religion, and music.  But his point is valid.  The majority of emancipated slaves had little knowledge of the world beyond the plantations, of the historical and social forces that had established the plantations, of the policies that could be adopted to defend the people, and of the possibilities for human life that education could provide.   But they had the wisdom to appreciate the limitations in their understanding and to lift up Toussaint to speak on their behalf.  This humility and practical wisdom of the people is an important factor in the emergence of charismatic leaders in revolutionary processes.

 
References

James, C.L.R.  1989.  The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, Second Edition, Revised.  New York: Vintage Books, Random House.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, colonial, neocolonial, blog Third World perspective, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution, Toussaint L’Ouverture, charismatic leader, North-South cooperation