by Henry D. RoseRace permeates and largely motivates the Tea Partyers, who are intent on launching a new era of “massive white resistance” much like that of half a century ago. “What this massive resistance demonstrates is that any attempt to paint the U.S.A as post-racial is an exercise in delusion.” President Obama's race-neutral project is caught between a hard place and the rock that's always been there.
The New Era of White “Massive Resistance”
by Henry D. Rose
“Obama’s ability to move America beyond partisan political discourse has been deflated.”
There are howling mouths screaming at the top of their lungs about socialism being snuck into their America. Mobs of white people with nooses, staging mock lynching of the president pepper the landscape. Gun toting, tobacco chewing, cowboy hat wearing, bible thumping white men are showing up at town hall meetings about health care, misquoting the US Constitution and calling for the blood of tyrants. Spittle rolls down the face of white conservatives across regional, economic, and religious lines as they bellow about wanting their country back. The specter of violence hangs over the summer of 2009 in America.
The attacks on President Barak Obama, his tepid attempts at political reform, and the weak response of both Obama’s White House and the American (white) mainstream are instructive for Black people in the U.S.A. The first Black President in US history is being attacked for being an illegal alien, a closet socialist, a man who plans to euthanize aged Americans, and a deep cover racist (who grew up in a white household). The push for healthcare reform by the Democratic Party has been met by the Republican-led white, right-wing coalition. This coalition has been intimidating meeting goers, and held multiple symbolical lynching’s of Obama. They bring back the specter of massive resistance. The strategy of “massive resistance” was based on white racial resistance to dismantling the terrorist organization of the US South known to the world as Jim Crow or segregation. This new era “massive resistance” is also a white racial project. One of the reasons that Black people are so protective of President Obama is that Obama is attacked on the basis of his Blackness. What this massive resistance demonstrates is that any attempt to paint the U.S.A as post-racial is an exercise in delusion. Obama’s ability to move America beyond partisan political discourse has been deflated.
“This new era 'massive resistance' is also a white racial project.”
Republican Party operatives have been unanimous in their unwillingness to budge on a public option for health care. Suddenly remembering the need for fiscal responsibility after decades of running deficits, conservatives want to know how health care would be paid for. The right wing coalition is a toxic mix of racial resentment, economic insecurity, confused class consciousness, religious intolerance, and corporate power. In taking the position that they have on health care the right has framed part of their argument on the claim that a public option in health care is stealth reparations for Black people. At the center of the modern right wing ideology lays a backlash against Black gains from the civil rights era. The right rose upon anti-tax-anti-government sentiments of a broad sector of the white working class. This sector of the white working class has been and still is multi-ethnic. As the power of the white world was shaken by anti-colonial, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist movements the corporate rulers of the white world responded by aborting any national responsibility towards their working class.
The white working class has always been an enigmatic creature. It has never played the revolutionary role that many on the white left have predicted for it. The white working class is now and always has been a working class of a global imperial project and has the schizophrenic consciousness to prove it. Though many on the left of the Marxist bent claim that the white working class has a false class consciousness, what they actually have is a split consciousness. The global expansion of white people through settler colonialism has greatly benefitted the white working class in the USA in particular. The white working class has waged their largest battles over keeping their place as white people in a world that was ruled by white people.
“At the center of the modern right wing ideology lays a backlash against Black gains from the civil rights era.”
Keeping their jobs, feeding their families, and protecting their homes and neighborhoods against unwanted elements (Black people being the number one unwanted element) has been how white workers are most easily mobilized. White working class neighborhoods, with their American flags flying are dangerous places for Black people to be in after dark. In fact Black parents long warned their children that they were in imminent danger if they found themselves in an American flag flying community. And the continual wars that America has waged on the Third World have been supported and reinforced by the white working class. While no one can doubt that class matters, Black people must make their own analysis of people’s social class in white settler countries. The universality of the working class that Marx spoke of may not apply to white workers. Were white workers on the slave ships the same class as the enslaved Africans? As white workers were bashing the skulls in of Native American men, women, and children while stealing land did the white workers and Native people belong to the same social class? Is the white union worker who shows class solidarity in the work place but voices the vilest stereotypes against Arabs and Muslims a member of the same global working class as the Arab workers? Is the Israeli Labor Party a working class party the way a Palestinian working class organization is? When working class European Jews fleeing from Europe came to Palestine and provided the muscle for the dispossession of the Palestinian people were they confused about their class interest or did they follow what they thought their racial/national interest was?
“While no one can doubt that class matters, Black people must make their own analysis of people’s social class in white settler countries.”
The health care debate raises all of these types of questions again. For the Black working class this should clearly demonstrate the need to retain ideological and institutional independence. The white working class is at best a very fickle possible ally and at worst a blood thirsty pseudo-class that will team with the white ruling class to attempt to continue white world domination. The people that attempt to obliterate these contradictions by claiming a social sameness between white workers and the Black masses are doing Black people no favors. Theory must attempt to describe reality and not tailor reality to fit the theory.
Henry D. Rose is currently the statewide coordinator for the New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance. Mr. Rose was lead organizer for SEIU 1199 New Jersey. He is chair and founder of Blacks for Social Justice, the publisher of Chin Check newsletter, and a member of People’s Organization for Progress. Mr. Rose cofounded Genesis Shule (a community school in Newark).
Kwesi Pratt Jr. is General Secretary of the Socialist Movement of Ghana.
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