/* Written 8:58 pm Dec 28, 1992 by mim@nyxfer.UUCP in igc:gen.racism */
/* ---------- "500 Years of White Unity" ---------- */
Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
from the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
MIM Notes, Issue 69: October, 1992
500 Years of White Unity
by MC12
Many people have chosen the 500 year anniversary of the landing of
Cristobal Colon as an opportunity to denounce the colonial
conquest of the peoples and lands of these continents. The
occasion must also be noted for what it is today: a milestone in
the *unbroken chain* of Amerikan oppression which stretches
through half a millennium.
MIM has always emphasized that Amerikan oppression is national
oppression -- the exploitation of nations by a whole nation. Since
the first poor whites demanded total subjugation of native
peoples, and their working class compatriots in Europe clamored
for cheaper consumer commodities produced by slaves, the oppressor
nation has, as a whole, feasted on the spoils of genocidal
Amerika.
That is why, from the perspective of the oppressed nations, the
"left" and "right" of Amerikan politics are so hard to tell apart.
In the 1600s, white farmers led a revolt (Bacon's rebellion) to
demand more land-grabbing war on native people, and, in Bacon's
words, the "utter Ruine and destruction" (sic) of all Indians. The
event is considered a milestone of "democratic resistance" for the
Amerikan left.(1)
In the 1700s, the incipient white working class rallied around the
Amerikan revolution in order to gain more control over the state's
tools of repression and exploitation, and to develop independent
capitalism. Sixty-five thousand slaves joined the war on the side
of the British, more than 10 times the number who fought for
settler Amerika -- and many more used the crisis as a chance to
fight for freedom on their own. Most of the Amerikan left
maintains that revolution as the birth of democracy in Amerika,
starting a tradition which must now be remade. The oppressed know
that the innovation of that era was the reuniting of Amerikan
nationals against their subjects, the native, Black and other
oppressed nations.(2)
In the 1800s, modern capitalism gave birth to the Amerikan labor
movement. Its leaders fought for the elevation of white workers,
the extension of slavery, and the exclusion of oppressed peoples
from all spheres of power. When Chinese workers struck for better
conditions in the West, white workers forced their unions to
organize boycotts of goods which were not "Made with White Labor
Only." In 1879, 99% of California white voters voted to ban
Chinese immigration, after Chinese workers had built the railroads
out West and made huge tracts of California lands suitable for
growing crops.(3)
After the bourgeoisie finally convinced white workers that slavery
was an infeasible economic system, white workers and their allies
took their battles to the streets of Northern cities, fighting to
keep Black workers (who were often driven off what little land
they had by white settlers) in the lowest industries, jobs and
neighborhoods.(4)
White "feminism" further extended the suffering of oppressed
nationals, as suffragettes argued that if white men didn't give
white women the vote, white power would be fatally threatened. A
Kentucky suffragist leader wrote that the National American
Women's Suffrage Association "never hesitated to show that the
White women's vote would give supremacy to the white race."(5)
These white supremacists decided the suffragette movement would
wear white. It was a convenient decision: the only thing missing
from their day-time wardrobe was the white hoods they needed for
nighttime cross-burnings and lynchings.
The Amerikan women of the pseudo-feminist movement today pay proud
homage to their early white supremacist sisters, as they wear
white in National Organization for Women marches. And the white
labor movement leads a massive fight to keep their jobs at
hundreds of times the wages of Third World workers, and keep
immigrant competition away. They clamor for war and conquest
abroad, and for the repression of revolutionary movements among
the oppressed in the ghettos, barrios and fields within Amerika.
The only revolutionary movement within Amerika since 1492 been the
movement of oppressed nations against the dominant Amerikan
nation. There is no revolutionary class or gender struggle
separate from this overarching reality. Within the revolutionary
struggle of the oppressed nations, proletarian and feminist
struggles propel the movement forward. There can be no
revolutionary "working class" movement, and no revolutionary
"feminist" movement, which does not adopt the perspective of the
oppressed nations, and fight for their emancipation.
The first test of any revolutionary movement within Amerika
remains the same today as it was the day Columbus first raped an
Arawak woman: does the movement fundamentally oppose Amerika and
all that it stands for? Or does it merely pose left in its quest
-- deliberate or accidental -- for a unified oppressor nation?
Notes:
1. J. Sakai, _Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat_,
Morningstar Press, 1983. pp.12-16.
2. Sakai, p.19.
3. Sakai, pp. 33-37. George MacNeil, ed., _The Labor Movement: The
Problem of To-day,_ New York: 1892. pp.446-7.
4. See for example _Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919,_
William Tuttle, New York: 1980.
5. Paula Giddings, _When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black
Women on Race and Sex in America,_ New York, 1984. pp.125-26.
Subscribe to MIM Notes:
Individual: Institutional:
1 year domestic $12 1 year domestic $48
2 years domestic $20 2 years domestic $90
1 year overseas $36 1 year overseas $60
Make checks payable to "ABS" or send cash.
MIM, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576
--- email: mim%nyxfer@igc.apc.org
NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit Modem: 718-448-2358 * Internet: nytransfer@igc.apc.org