1. There are two roots to accommodation to racism within the OC by national minorities: a. Internalized oppression – whereby national minorities accept or buy into white chauvinist views of themselves to one degree or another. Capitulation to that internalized oppression leads to not struggling against racist errors. b. Pessimism toward white comrades – the view that white people can’t change or take up the struggle against their white chauvinism. This view negates the fact that the struggle against racism is in the interests of the entire working class.
2. These ideological roots are manifested in two forms of accommodation among national minorities in the OC: a. Assimilation: the passive side of accommodation, and the dominant form in the OC. This is a system of ideas and actions whereby national minorities try to be accepted by whites, and adjust to their racism. In the communist movement it has taken the form of national minorities falling for the ideology of bourgeois liberalism. They see white comrades as the relatively “good whites” compared to white workers and adjust to their racism in deed. They underestimate the depths of white chauvinism among white comrades and are satisfied with the slightest steps forward by these comrades. This obviously often leads to right errors on the part of national minorities in taking up the struggle against racism, and thus accommodates racism. b. Narrow nationalism: the active side of accommodation. This is a whole system of ideas that sees building multinational unity as impossible, and advocates that only national minorities can solve the problems of national minorities, since white people will always be racist. Therefore, nationalism proposes separate all-national-minority forms as a principle. In the OC it has manifested itself as giving up the struggle with white comrades to overcome their racism. It often leads to left errors in the part of national minorities in taking up the struggle against racism. These and all manifestations of nationalism accommodate racism.
3. Accommodation to racism is the result of both narrow nationalism and assimilationism, rooted in internalized oppression and pessimism. It feeds white chauvinism. Accommodation has a serious negative impact on the OC.
For example, national minorities have accommodated racism in the OC by allowing their tasks to be ghettoized, i.e., allowing themselves to become the anti-racist consultants. This not only allows white comrades to abdicate their primary responsibility to take up the struggle against racism, but it holds back national minority comrades from asserting all-sided leadership, thereby holding back the party-building movement as a whole. Or national minority comrades, in capitulating to racism, will often not assert their correct views strongly, buying into the racist view that they understand things less well. So all accommodation to racism holds back the struggle against racism and the party-building movement as a whole.
4. Petty-bourgeois chauvinism among national minorities in the OC also accommodates racism. It compromises the ability of petty-bourgeois national minorities to see the full extent of racism towards working class national minorities, for petty-bourgeois national minorities–out of their petty-bourgeois chauvinism–have some unity with the white chauvinist view that working class national minorities are inferior.