Written: June 30, 1980.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Although I’d heard it said before, I never understood C/SC in this way until now: my ideas (racist and other) are not my personal property. They belong to the working class. In other words instead of trying to hide my racism, I need to get out in the open so we can deal with it: “Dress up that dog and take it for a walk.”
What do I think in general about minorities? Up until last Sunday I might have said that they were a product of their conditions, their oppression, and leave it at that. But I’ve been dragged by my comrades to a recognition of what it means when I say I’m a racist, a white chauvinist. It means I have an attitude of superiority to Black and other national minorities, which extends to a lesser degree to working people in general. I see them as inferior in many ways, e.g., as less intelligent than whites, unreliable, spontaneous, ”etc. – incapable ultimately of being communists, making a socialist revolution and creating a new society.
The above generalizations don’t come out of the clear blue. I can draw them from my everyday thoughts, words and actions. An example: I’m being laid off my job at the hospital. Since I have seniority I can be assigned to another job (“bumping”) in another department. But it’s my boss, a liberal white physician, who decides what job and schedule I’ll be offered. And it’s he who writes me a recommendation evaluating my last 4 years of employment. In an informal discussion during work of the layoffs with my boss, I reiterated our affirmative action demands. In response my boss made a blatantly racist comment of the paternalistic Kind: He said it didn’t matter if minorities didn’t stay on, that he’d read a study which showed that minorities preferred to receive health care from white doctors. I meekly spit out a few words of disapproval and walked away. Other workers were listening. Furthermore, this doctor is responsible for overseeing the health care of thousands of people, most of whom are minorities, as well as training other health care providers in the school of public health. I didn’t challenge his racism. I didn’t break with the racist conspiracy I have with him and the other white workers in our clinic. (But I tried to keep up my anti-racist credentials; I mumbled something.) What was I protecting by not taking up the struggle? I was opportunistic, blatantly; I was obviously protecting my job options. But I was also protecting my white chauvinist position, and maintaining the racism in the clinic. I was maintaining the conspiracy – the liberal’s paternalistic view that in fact minorities do prefer white health care providers. And since I do think that white folks are superior, of course I think that they make better practitioners. That’s why I couldn’t struggle: I agreed with him. (I’m clear that the capitalist system has developed racism and conditioned and trained me to it. And, I know I’ve internalized it and that I’m opportunistically dependent on it in many ways. Even though I’ve committed myself to destroying this system which has developed and maintains racism I still haven’t given up my white chauvinism, I have to break with it; I can begin to do that by breaking the conspiracy which maintains it. I understand this conspiracy to consist of an unprincipled unity between me and other whites in which I/we protect my relatively privileged position in society and in our movement by being liberal with on one another around our racism. By participating in the conspiracy I keep national minority and working class folks down.
Why don’t I talk about socialism to minority and working class folks at the hospital? (No, it’s not because I’m afraid of being ultra-leftist in my mass work.) ?or one, if they were drawn to our organizations, all my racist and anti-working class errors at the work place would be revealed to my comrades. Secondly, It’s because I am threatened by the fact that to the degree that national minorities and working class people take up communism, I’ll find myself no longer in a leadership position, and in fact I’ll be under the leadership of all kinds of inferior people, (“ordinary folks”), B1ack comrades, other minorities and workers. In principle, as a communist that’s a day I’m working for and looking forward to. But in fact my actions do not reflect that goal. I realize now that I’ve been seeing the national minorities and working class as the object and not the subject of a socialist revolution: I and my white petit bourgeois comrades will build our political careers by developing the theory and like missionaries will then take it to the working, class. What kind of theory is that??
What do I think about national minorities in the OCIC? Last summer Comrade Zasulich visited our city. Looking back on our meeting I realize now I was not “impressed” by the comrade. (I’d never bothered to read anything he’d written, or to find our about him. And I’m sure I didn’t listen to what he said at our meeting.) Running through my mind was, “He’s another of the minorities in the OC.” Now, I know in general that I feel that Black folks are inferior. But what’s this particular reaction I have to national minorities in the OC? I found that I would have approved of this comrade’s position if he’d been a leading person in a Black nationalist formation. (He would also have been in his “proper place” if he’d not been in a relationship with a white woman.) But why this special disdain? It’s because I have such a low opinion of national minorities that I think these particular ones must be opportunists. That they put up with all our racism and still stay around. They must be opportunists! Although I know better, I still assume that they must have “flunked out” of the nationalist movements (when it’s the opposite that’s the case), and see that given the paternalistic racism in the OC and our movement, they’re going to have a good chance for leadership spots. With that kind of an attitude, how can I accept a national minority’s leadership?
Another aspect is that I automatically ghettoize the tasks of minority comrades: “Hey, what are you doing here in the party building movement? (In our white, petit bourgeois party building movement.) Don’t you know your place is to lead the B1ack or Asian or Latin community, and not here carrying out theoretical work with us white comrades?” (Or, in fact you can be here as tokens but don’t think that you can provide me leadership.) I’m saying I don’t see minorities as being capable of providing leadership to me or of providing communist leadership in general.
So how does that make any sense given that I supposedly do accept leadership from national minority comrades here in my locale? The fact is my view of the national minority leading comrades here is that they’re special individuals, exceptions, and that they’re somehow overcome the limitations of their race. But the race is still inferior, and they’re still less than the white comrades. What does it mean that I say that these comrades are exceptional? It’s saying that only gifted people can be in leadership. It means I don’t think minorities, or working class people in general can come to communism.
Shockley is in my closet. I’ll put him on a leash and take him for a walk. It’s no surprise to me, it’s not a surprise to other white comrades, and it’s certainly no surprise to the minority comrades and my fellow workers. This white chauvinism is going to stay in there in my closet causing me to “walk quickly through (certain) neighborhoods”, to assume that people of color won’t take pills regularly and so give them a shot instead, (because they’re unreliable, and don’t value or respect themselves), and assume that minorities don’t have anything to teach me, so I’ll not listen to them, and much more. These things will continue to happen unless I bring it out into the open.
I now agree that liberalism never moved anything or anyone forward. Once my racist ideas are out in the open I can begin to deal with them in a collective way–see where they come from. I’m beginning the process of breaking with the conspiracy. The end of the conspiracy means open season on racism. Whenever I see it I’m going to take it up, and vigorously. Whenever white comrades especially see it in me I expect them to criticize it. My ability to detect my racism is going to increase because I know I have a real interest in breaking with my racism. Until I do I can’t move forward as a communist, nor can multi-national working class and communist movements come together to make a socialist revolution. Until I break with the conspiracy I’ll be unable to learn from national minority comrades or accept their leadership.
One of the rectifications of my racism is to develop and carry out a plan for myself of theoretical study and discussion on white chauvinism as a priority, on-going task. The origins of racism, its historical manifestations and an analysis of its class nature will increase my consciousness and fortify my struggle. Because or my role as Local Center chairperson I need to give leadership to assuring that all OC forces take up this theoretical task.
However, I see the main tool in my struggle against my white chauvinism as my participation in collective accountability through criticism and self-criticism, with the goal deepening my break with the white chauvinist conspiracy and of drawing all white comrades out of the “conspiracy” and into the struggle.
Getting back to accepting leadership from minority comrades. In reality the leadership I accept from them is superficial. For example, last winter before the April Western Regional meeting of the OC, two national minority comrades in my locale discussed with me the importance of putting the question of the NMMLC Resolution on the agenda for the April meeting. I agreed it was important and said I would put it on the agenda and take up struggle around it at the April meeting. But the meeting came and went and I completely “forgot” to propose it for discussion. Not only does that show that I did not accept the B1ack comrades’ leadership on this question, but it also revealed that in fact I was not making the struggle a against racism in the OC a central issue, that I didn’t actually agree that it was important. Or rather that I was protecting myself and white chauvinism. Not taking up the NMMLC Resolution and all the racist errors that I and other white comrades have made around it is in essence not taking up the struggle against racism.
My even more frequent failure to accept national minority women’s leadership is especially indicative of my acceptance of sexist stereotypes as well as racist ones. The error is again usually some variety of the “invisible” person, i.e., she might as well not have spoken, because I tuned out whatever she said. I hear a person if my attitude when she opens her mouth is, “Pay attention; you’re going to learn something here.” That is, if I respect that person. And the evidence shows time and again, I often do not hear Comrade Tiffanie in all sorts of occasions, but especially when she criticizes me, or too, when she criticizes another white comrade around racism. It’s part of the conspiracy. By protecting the other white comrades I’m protecting myself. Back to Comrade Tiffanie: I don’t accept the fact that this Black woman is telling me what my errors are. And if I accepted the criticism might that not threaten my and all the white comrades’ position of infallibility and superiority?
Underlying my relationship to the national minority comrades is opportunism. Being associated with them gives me anti-racist credentials in the communist movement, and in the OC. I’ve been using my relationship to them to further my own leadership aspirations.
Another example of my not accepting leadership from Comrade Tiffanie: In a recent LC meeting she lead an important struggle which revealed that another white comrade had not agreed with the essence of an example of racism in our discussion of the NMMLC Resolution. As chair I’d completely missed what Comrade Tiffanie had shown us. I hadn’t heard her, hadn’t accepted her leadership in the session. That racism, coupled with my pragmatism of wanting to “dispense with the subject” and move the agenda, caused me to fail to sum up the racism in the meeting. I was using my leadership position to block class struggle. Comrade Tiffanie’s taking leadership at the meeting was shunned by me. I resented her and Comrade Loretha’s assertion of leadership. More examples of the conspiracy in action!
Later in that same meeting when it had been made clear to me the white chauvinist role I was playing, I became “disoriented”, lost control of the meeting and was on the verge of tears. I was putting forth not a passive defense of myself, but an active maintenance of the white chauvinist conspiracy. I was the primary creator of an atmosphere of a “witch hunt” as it was later described by one of the white workers in the LC. I was putting forward the image of being unjustly attacked, when in fact I had been the one who was attacking the national minority comrades, denying their clarity and leadership.
About my no struggle attitude: Comrade Tiffanie made an observation and criticism of me: that she always found my presentations and role as chair in the LC to be boring and monotonous. So she asked herself where that came from, comparing it to the enthusiasm and vigor with which, for example, Comrade Loretha always takes up her work. Comrade Tiffanie went on to point out that this was part of an overall “no struggle” attitude on my part. She said further, that class hatred (of the bourgeoisie) is reflected in sharp ideological struggle. An so, although we’re all clear that content is primary over form, it’s also clear that my whole passive demeanor has not been reflecting a working class stand. (Re. my passivity as a “form”: specifically, in terms of the struggle against racism as well as the struggle against my anti-working class biases, I have in the past put forward a passivity, going so far as to cry and become disoriented, as I mentioned earlier, when I’m being criticized. This form is opportunist and obscures the racist content which is very much active.) Back to the question of class stand: I agree with the comrade’s assessment, and in thinking about it more have recognized another aspect of my lack of animation. It has to do with my role as a conspirator in the white chauvinist conspiracy, especially when I’m in contact with minorities, and particularly with minorities whom I need to stay in the good graces of in order to maintain my anti-racist credentials. I had to be extra careful; I was walking on shells. This meant for me, thinking out what I would say and screening it especially for racist and anti-working class content.
As a comrade recently reminded me, being afraid of criticism makes it impossible to set in motion the process of dealing with my racist ideas and actions.
It’s a reflection of the backward state of our movement that I did not make the initial move (nor did the other white comrades in our Local Center) to crack the white chauvinist conspiracy. It’s only under the leadership of the national minority comrades that it’s being broken. If I’m serious about uniting the class and winning white workers “to taking up the special demands of nationally oppressed peoples,” then I’ve got to start struggling against my own racism. I will never be of any use to the communist movement as long as my white, chauvinism and anti-working class attitudes prevent me from learning from the most advanced and class conscious people in our society and our movement, the national minorities and working class. The proof of my commitment and ability to change will be, as they say, in the pudding.
“TELL NO LIES. CLAIM NO EASY VICTORIES.” Amilcar Cabral.