The Liberals And The Obsession With Whiteness.
Channel: Richard Mellor
Date: 2022-10-17

The obsession with "whiteness" is just another aspect of identity politics. In case you do not view the movie clip, I do not deny the issue of white skin privilege or the history of racial violence and exclusion and what that has meant for black folks and other people of color. It was an article in the liberal online US Guardian about whiteness being the most dangerous threat to democracy in the US. The rise of fascists, white nationalists and other extreme right wing racist groups are a concern but they've always been there and there's no doubt Trump gave them the confidence to come in to the open more.

But this is isn't the 1890's when Debs attempt to get the white workers to support the black workers joining the Pullman Strike, or the 1920's or the the 1960's. The percentage of black workers in unions is higher than whites; women and workers of color are very prominent in the recent organizing drives at Amazon, Starbucks and other workplaces seeking unionization. The US ruling class and their mass media likes to keep the racist flame alive, while trying to avoid open race war and riots that are very expensive for them. The number of politicians of color in the US body politic is significant when compared to the past and most of them in the party that the author of that article supports. They too impose draconian policies on all working people including black workers and the poor. He seems quite fond of Biden whose history with regard to racism in US politics and society is pretty lame. He has been quite at home with the open racists in Congress.

Two fairly recent books that are worth reading that have a much clearer view about the mood among the US working class and also how black workers and other workers of color can best resolve the crises that a racist state governed by two racist capitalist parties perpetuate, are Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism by Tauré Reed and The Panthers Can't Save us Now by Cedric Johnson.

Not every voter for Trump is a white supremacist. It's more complicated than that, and I would argue that the mood against racism in US society is far greater than these pessimistic petit bourgeois authors claim. This isn't to deny it exists and that Trump gave them reason to crawl out from under the rocks, but we must not lose sight of the fact that the US capitalist class (class doesn't appear to exist for that writer) neither is there a working class in his world. 

The ongoing protests against police brutality and state violence, that engulfed the nation since Oscar Grant, Michael Brown, George Floyd and others were undoubtedly multi racial affairs and and became more so as time passed.

It's important to not lose track of Malcolm X's views on this subject when he said "You can't have capitalism without racism". This is a quote many of the middle class black radical writers ignore because they don't really agree with him on this. Their orientation is to improve their class position in relation to their white class colleagues in the capitalist pecking order. They are competition and them and in league with them at the same time depending on the situation and the balance of class forces.