Campaigns
- Beyond Diversity: The Struggle for Justice and Solidarity
- American Racism: An Organizer's Perspective 2003
American Racism
An Organizer's Perspective 2003
Minority people may not be frequently shot down these days with immunity -- though it can still happen under color of law -- and there may no longer be the "No Indians" signs on the Southwestern restaurant doors and the ugly Woolworth lunch counter episodes awaiting those non-White. Minorities moving into previously all-White neighborhoods in the Yankee lands are generally no longer burned out. But poke the turf anywhere in the United States and there's still plenty of racism and ethnocentrism right under the grass -- just like stratified rock.
And the general economic situation is increasingly bad -- going right down Skid Road into the waters of heavy recession, and maybe even depression. In this grim geography of mounting crisis, there is massively disproportionate minority sub-employment and unemployment. The never-reality of health, education and welfare for all of those "of the fewest alternatives" -- minorities and otherwise -- is now frequently a very cruel joke.
Assaults on minority cultural programs and non-English languages are now common.
Federal and state and vigilante attacks on immigrants -- especially those of darker skin -- have become legion.
And, for many of Islamic background, and emanating directly from the sacristy of the Federal colossus itself, there is the cruelest harassment and incarceration treatment since at least the massive Japanese-American imprisonment [and collateral land-theft by Anglos] of sixty years ago.
Anyone who is at all naive about the extraordinary survival and resurgence abilities of racism and cultural ethnocentrism and all of the other related anti-people isms is either myopic or a damn fool. The proverbial rattlesnake who, shot innumerable times, still twists and spits "until the sun goes down" is an easy adversary -- compared to the Varieties of Human Hate.
And now, these days, hate groups are certainly moving very actively about in the United States -- and some are steadily growing.. High nationalism, domestic and international paranoia, "Wars" against dark-skinned peoples, and the significantly deepening economic difficulties are among the basic factors stimulating such virulent hate organizations as the National Alliance, the Nationalist Movement, Identity Church, Aryan Nations, the Order, contemporary Klans, racist skinheads et al.
And all of these, grounded on a completely irrational myriad of murky and mercurial forces, defy easy and conventional sociological blackboard analysis. The pathology of these outfits is certainly complex -- but there are always certain specific consistencies: they are racist, poisonously ethnocentric, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, usually homophobic and frequently carry all sorts of other anti-people "isms" as well. And they are very often violent -- increasingly so.
The old Southern Klans developed and functioned [and the few survivors still do] in the context of the traditionally closed South and its open, widespread poverty -- with the poor Whites being cunningly and consistently manipulated in anti-union and racist schemes by the economic Big Mules, the "Captains." The primary basis for the old Klans was/is economic.
These far more complex and increasingly sophisticated contemporary hate organizations [again, National Alliance et al.] reflect in virulent fashion, via their own sick and twisted perspective -- the great maelstrom of forces in which modern Humanity is enmeshed.
But, when you cut down -- through it all -- right to their ultra-venomous bone, you find, again and always, the very basic components: racism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism and all the other anti-people isms. And you find violence. And you also find, as the ultimate foundational component, very substantial economic concerns, fear, and massive insecurities.
While all of these pose substantial threats and dangers, the one category now most open to racist/violent recruitment -- and this has been true for at least the past generation -- are economically precarious, disaffected and alienated White youth: racist skinhead material.
And, of course, it isn't just active and potential hate-groupers who warrant concern. It's a great many average American Anglos -- fundamentally decent people in many ways, but with serious hang-ups about folks who they perceive as "different."
And, let me note, it isn't easy to be, say, one of the always few Native Americans or often the only one -- or other minority faculty -- in the ostensibly genteel and usually wicked Groves of Academe where virtually everyone piously denies in proper prose being racist or ethnocentric.
Approaches? Well, as always: Keep on organizing, keep on fighting. That's Genesis.
Organizing -- genuinely effective people-oriented organizing -- is always hard, tough work. It means getting and keeping people together for action. It's tedious and frequently mundane. Sometimes it's dangerous. But it's absolutely critical. And every movement -- Native rights, radical, labor, civil rights, and all others reaching to the Sun -- is built on the wreckage and the remains and the hard lessons of its predecessors.
Some specific things? Widespread exposure of issues and multi-faceted education -- certainly. Arrest and prosecution for hate crimes -- for sure. Hard-fighting human rights action -- always. But very basically, racially and ethnically integrated grassroots socio-economic justice and advocacy organizations, wide-spread public works programs and other related approaches [e.g., the old voluntary Civilian Conservation Corps], the push for full employment with living wage and much more, and full health care and a decent education, and militant and democratic and pervasive unionization.
And, most fundamentally of all, a democratic and egalitarian society organized to ensure that a full measure of bread and butter and a full measure of respect and liberty are accorded every human -- everywhere.
And now, putting on my Indian blanket and viewing the whole panorama from the perspective of a Native who is also a perennial outdoor mountain and mesa climber:
When all is said and done, and one sits on the edge of a 'way up ridge or high mesa and looks out at the geographical contours of the Earth, you can see that most of these blend smoothly and logically together. And so it is with the contours of humankind and all its varied ways of life. These, seen from a high vantage point, flow for the most part into and with one another. The dichotomy of working class / employing class is -- no matter how diverse the various peoples involved -- the great basic river-thrust. Of the ultimate outcome, genuine socialist democracy for all of the many colors and cultures, I certainly have no doubt.
Human commonality demands Justice -- and will get it. And I know that Spring will come again.
Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] Micmac / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk
Regional Organizer, DSA Anti-Racism Commission
Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ
and Ohkwari'
DSA: www.dsausa.org/antiracism