It's Racism, Stupid!
tallpaul (Paul Kneisel)
by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin
IT'S RACISM, STUPID!
In one of my columns about racial profiling and the Michigan police, a
white
"radical" wrote in "chastisising" me about referring to this form of police
harassment as "Driving While Black", since he said that he as a white male
had on occasion been stopped by the cops himself because of his "long
hair."
He also went on to say that I should concentrate on "class politics",
instead of "mere racial issues." Since I didn't want to answer him in a
personal letter, frankly didn't have the inclination to enage in this
discussion with yet another smug white middle class "radical", I decided to
do it in my column for the Michigan Citizen.
I think that many white people just don't understand just how serious this
matter is, nor how racism really plays out in the lives of Black people, in
relationship to authority and the state. Black people have been shot and
killed because of racial profiling and other forms of racial harassment.
They are in prison in massive numbers because of the low quality of life
and
lack of decent employment in this country. Black babies die from infant
mortality at 3rd world levels, because of the lack of proper nourishment.
Further, these Black people are forced to live in racial and economic
ghettoes, within which many die or suffer from preventable diseases for
years. Their communities are impoverished and underdeveloped due to
conscious denial of community development funding by the government. In
other words, they are an oppressed people, not just individuals harassed
because of their clothing, the way they talk or dress, although there is no
question these things can play a part in an individual case.
But, racism and police brutality go much deeper than the surface appearance
of Black people. The fact that it is the government itself which protects
these racist cops, even when they commit the most horrendous murders should
tell us all something, that and the fact that disproportionate numbers of
Black people are the ones being killed, not white men with beards, wearing
tie-dyed shirts, or pony-tails. It just ain't the same, my friend! We are
not talking about personal prejudice by some dumb white guy who just
doesn't
"like" Black people, but systematic racism by the state, national
oppression, as some social scientists call it, even "internal colonialism"
by others. Hey, the cop himself does not act as an individual, but rather
as
an agent of the state, a hired gun. Now everyone claims to understand this
intellectually, but Black people are being brutalized in the real world,
not
in theory.
In speaking about any class issues in the United States, an understanding
of
white supremacy and economic inequality must go hand-in-hand. Most white
"radicals" want to neatly put "race issues" over in one neat category, and
then "class issues" in another. We'll call this "vulgar radicalism" because
it is totally not based on any social or political understanding of the
problem. The US working class has never been monolithic, there has always
been a dual tier economy of poor oppressed workers of color on the bottom,
and better paid and treated whites standing on top of and benefitting from
their misery. I don't just mean the bosses either, as many so-called
"radicals" like to claim, when they talk mythically about some so-called
"aristocracy of labor."
In a country with a history of racial genocide, racial slavery, and other
forms of racialized oppression, it is chauvanism and political opportunism
of the worst sort to call for peoples of color to blindly follow behind
some
corrupt white dominated political or social movement to liberate
themselves.
This has been a problem for Labor, Socialist, Anarchist, and other radical
movements for decades. They have a White, middle class understanding of
this
race and class oppression as mere "prejudice", and see the problem as a
simple matter of making "those Blacks" see that they should just "follow
us". This idea of the "white working class hero" is really dangerous and
delusional, sliding into racism itself.
With an epidemic of police crimes, and now that the prison system is being
used to confine huge number of poor Black and non-white peoples, it is
treachery and escapism to refuse to acknowledge that this is happening
because of America's legacy of racism, and because this capitalism
political
and economic system is deteriorating. It is funny how in the United States,
most whites have an obliterated consciousness when it comes to racism, they
see it as an adjunct to something else, whether economic theory or
religious
dogma. The questions of internal power dynamic (of which racism is a part)
are reduced to a group of Wall Street economic overlords or owners of
industry, to which we are all *equally* disposed and exploited. Again, any
economic analysis cannot be based on the white European experience alone,
rather than the United States America as a nation-state. To me, this is
part
of where they always go wrong...using mechanical analysis to explain
everything. I ain't buying it, the cops ain't stopping the cars of Black
folks cause they are just oppressing "everybody alike". It's racism,
stupid,
get your head out of your butt!