Diversity, Equity & Inclusion or Class Struggle, Community Control and Socialist Reconstruction?
Part 1 of 3
By Collectivist Action
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion or Class Struggle, Community Control and Socialist Reconstruction?
(Part 1 of 3)
~~ by collectivist action ~~
It should be crystal clear by now that the liberal wing of the U.S. political bird of prey is trying its best to redefine the reality and relevance of the unprecedented 2020 global uprisings against police repression and white nationalism. While their explicitly fascist adversaries in the Republican Party could never be accused of promoting "black lives matter" (the rhetoric nor the all-but-defunct and defamed national org.) the Democratic Party and their multicultural operatives and allies are, once again, attempting to not only co-opt and control the leadership of the Black Liberation Movement, but also continue to mislead and misdirect ALL social justice movements in the U.S. Empire..
Their not-so-new ‘trojan horses’ toward that end are: diversity, equity and inclusion. At their best D.E.I. fail to express what many oppressed and exploited people actually want, need and have struggled for historically. If self determination has any meaning at all, it must be our ABSOLUTE right to ALWAYS define what-it-is-we’re-actually-
First of all, what exactly HAVE we fought for?
In what was called colonial North America, the most fundamental and antagonistic social struggle was NOT between the British Crown and their colonial subjects in the New World.. It involved and revolved around at least two irrepressible, intertwined conflicts, occurring simultaneously:
The Anti-slavery or Abolitionist Movement.
This was quintessentially a struggle between capital and (chattel enslaved) labor, in which the latter was ruthlessly exploited as both capital, commodities in an emerging world market. African Americans were at the center of that movement; one which was multicultral.
An anti-colonial movement.
This movement, by its very nature was connected to abolitionism since the expanding slavocracy required thee seizureof indigenous-occupied land. Indigenous communities were at the center of that struggle
After the surrender of the British to the separatist forces in the counterrevolutionary war, begun in 1776, and the establishment of the U.S. state in 1783 - 1787, the genocidal campaign to displace indigenous communities ratcheted up, resulting in the seizure of the entire land mass below the Canada-territories, by the middle 19th century, including half of the sovereign nation of Mexico..
As one of my American Indian Movement friends once told me, “We {Indians} are not fighting for civil rights.
First and foremost, we want control of our land back.”
I maintain that, contrary to the popular notion, the Black Liberation Movement - and certainly the class struggle of - has only PARTIALLY been about civil rights. The fight for civil, i., citizenship rights initially began as a way to attain and maintain freedom (whatever that meant in colonial America) AFTER escaping chattel slavery. A fight for ‘civil rights’ would have no meaning at all in captivity on any one of the hundreds slave labor camps, even after the nation state was formed.
We must also take seriously Pamela Bridgewater’s irrefutable analysis that effectively links the primary class struggles in the antebellum period - capital vs slave and indentured labor - with the ongoing struggle against patriarchal domination and exploitation.
In her article, Breeding a Nation: Reproductive Slavery and the Pursuit of Freedom, Joann Wypijewski succinctly articulates Bridgewater’s analysis on the subject:
“. . .because slavery depended on the slaveholder’s right to control the bodies and reproductive capacities of enslaved women, coerced reproduction was as basic to the institution as forced labor. . .Sexual and reproductive freedom is not simply a matter of privacy; it is fundamental to our and the law’s understanding of human autonomy and liberty. Therefore, constraints on that freedom are not simply unconstitutional, they effectively reinstate slavery.”(1)
Nevertheless, legalized 'racial' segregation, aka Jim Crow, in the states which abolished slavery in the antebellum period, offered, at best, no more than 2nd class citizenship, which was really NO citizenship rights at all. The ‘shadow of the plantation’, as radical historian/activist Harry Haywood said, followed nominally free black people all the way to the Canadian border.
It took the bloodiest war in the Western Hemisphere, the Civil War, to defeat the confederate insurgency. Thee latter actually began well before 1861, as another separatist movement emerged to prevent abolition of chattel slavery by forming a new nation; this time called the Confederate States of America (CSA).
After the war, the three constitutional amendments - 13th, 14th and 15th - guaranteeing the ex-slaves’ INCLUSION into the U.S. body politic were consistently violated and unenforced by local, state and federal forces. (The 13th allowed enslavement “as punishment for crime”, paving the way for another half century of ‘convict-lease’ slave labor.) The 14th amendment (citizenship) was used, more often than not, to uphold corporate interests rather than African American citizenship. The 15th, the right to vote, is still rife with unresolved contradictions‘ in many states today!
Meanwhile, as Professor Gerald Horne and a host of others have informed us, the displacement of indigenous communities and the almost total capture of their lands and resources by the end of the 19th century continued unabated with the imperialistic march to the Pacific Ocean. . .and beyond.
Meanwhile, during thee same period the most herald leader of African American communities, post Reconstruction, Booker T. Washington, DOWNPLAYED social and political inclusion. Whether he actually favored segregation or not, his prescription for black development primarily consisted of:
1) accept low paying wage slavery and social discrimination
2) don’t worry about voting rights
3) overlook white nationalist terrorism
4) show yourself worthy of white acceptance
5) “don’t grouse, work and save and buy a house”
Washington’s vision of freedom, formed in large part by his industrial benefactors, explicitly deprioritized including African Americans into civil society and political life. The 'reign of terror' which ensued, in spite of his vision, was euphemistically called the 'nadir'.
Subsequently, In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy vs Ferguson that segregation was essentially a valid and enforceable social system.
In light of this, the emergence of a national ‘civil rights’ movement not only seemed necessary for social and political progress to many African Americans, the fight to uphold and protect these rights seemed critical to day-to-day survival.
Needless to say the long nightmare of Jim Crow EXCLUSION continued well into the 1960s.
Lest we forget, despite gaining the right to vote in 1920, most women in the U.S. continued to be treated as legal ‘minors’, subject to random assaults and spousal rape with impunity, among other violations, until at least the 1970s. Reproductive rights are still being fought for today!
Although, indigenous people were granted citizenship rights in 1924, many continue to live in wretched conditions on ‘reservations’ under the ultimate rule of the U.S. federal government, a hundred years later . . .
(To be continued)
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