Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor

17 Feb 2021

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This week color-blindness on the left and the Black Misleadership Class were on your minds. We share your letters for “There is No Color-Blind Road to Socialism in the United States” and “Nightmare Years Will Repeat Themselves – Until the People Kick Out the Cabal.”

In “There is No Color-Blind Road to Socialism in the United States” Danny Haiphong criticizes the lack of attention to white supremacy on the left and how this cedes space to the Democratic Party’s cynical use of race.

Reg Callaway writes:

“Danny missed the elephant in the room. When there is any discussion about Obama and the Black community, one must look at it from a cold set of lenses for he set the community back decades in terms of well-being. No other single person caused so much wealth to leave the Black community than Obama. No one comes close.

“Not only did Obama swell the poverty lines with more Black faces than anyone in recent history, but he was highly instrumental in wrangling homes assets away from the Black community to benefit the likes of foreclosure king Mnuchin and Trump's slumlord stepson. Make no mistake, Obama gifted these losers with the blood and sweat of millions of Black homeowners. As a result, wealth inequality has never been wider between Black and White. Unfortunately, there are no plans to close this gap for Black demands fell off the radar screen once Mr. McGoo Biden was anointed to the monarchy.

“Because of monetary policy Obama helped engineer, all Blacks can hope for is to close the job numbers gap that pays McJob salaries once the pandemic is under more manageable control. The closing of the wealth gap is not in the cards.

“Danny also missed the US has always had a cruelty first policy towards its Black community. No amount of socializing or democratizing or republicanizing will change the country's kneejerk reaction to rebel against Black demands. The hatred is very visceral and deep-rooted. Sure, small changes can happen and a few marches downtown but in the big scheme of things demands for improving Black material wealth is a perilous avenue to take.”

In “Nightmare Years Will Repeat Themselves – Until the People Kick Out the Cabal” Glen Ford argues that only a Black led movement with ideological clarity can end the capitalist disaster the U.S. population is living through.

J.P. Bones writes:

“Glen, your piece is one of the best articles I have read in twenty years. You put the axe to the root in that piece!”

Randy Shields writes:

“I saw the 2017 documentary Whose Streets? in the theater when it was released and positively reviewed it. I liked it so much I watched it twice in row. But I recently bought the DVD and watched it today and all footage of the St. Louis crowd booing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton off the stage was removed. (Jackson was asking poor people for donations — maybe he should have had the Ferguson police collect for him! — and Sharpton said they should all go home and vote Democrat. It wasn’t even in the deleted scenes. Also in the theatrical release I remember Palestinians expressing solidarity with Ferguson protestors about dealing with tear gas. In the DVD there’s a couple tiny barely legible tweets and that’s it.

“The working class is constantly being tamed, censored, memory-holed and de-platformed. If you see something important you should save it (if possible) because working class history is being erased right and left. Don’t assume that facts and truth will always be available. And I wondered if these omissions had anything to do with the funders: Ford Foundation, McArthur Foundation and others. Right wingers mistakenly believe these foundations give money to stir up ‘trouble’ in the streets but what they really do is encourage groups like the BLM foundation to never go near the imperial war machine or talk about the apartheid of our time — Israel — and make sure that unrest quietly dies in Democratic Party politics.”

The struggle against a co-opted, synthetic left remains vital. Only political education can arm the masses with the ability to do build a serious left.

Jahan Choudhry is Comments Editor for Black Agenda Report. He is an organizer with the Saturday Free School based in Philadelphia, PA.

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