The Leftist Undercurrents of Anti-Blackness
An Open Letter to White Radicals*
*Formerly titled “To White Radicals: An Open Letter on The Failure of Precipitant Revolution and Internal Racial Abandonment on the Left”
I would like to reflect on the following excerpt from Black Against Empire:
What class reductionists fail to understand is that while there are capitalists selling the rope used to lynch Black people internationally for profit, the fact of the matter is that antiblack people still have the rope in their possession, doing the work of The State in creating and maintaining a vulnerable, subaltern class of people— a slave race known as Black people. Take away the rope from capitalists and redistribute the profits, but there will still be people with rope, still making sure us Black folks remain a slave race and thus both forcing and allowing us to be the gears that bring about wealth and wellbeing to nonblacks. Personalized capitalism, between individuals, is still capitalism. Racialized capitalism is still capitalism. Individualized capitalism is still capitalism. And so we must take away not only the rope and profits from The State, capitalists, and the bourgeosie, but also from all those capable of reinstating Black ontology as slavery. Capitalists have already socialized the possibility for nonblack people to lynch Black people and get away with it. And besides... What’s stopping nationalized and/or gift economies from encouraging the purchasing and trading of antiblack product too?
From the conception of race, to its fetishization and implementation throughout the globe in oppressing who was originally considered non-Human via capitalism and social death, Whites have had their share in the fight for their own “liberations”, only a fraction of which have been socialist or communist even in theory.
This materialized in wars, whether bourgeoisie or socialist, such as the “Liberty” [for white and white-adjacents] or Death counter revolutionary American Revolution (“Liberty” versus death) against ‘taxation without representation’, the French Revolution that resulted in triggering the global decline of absolute monarchies, and even the Bolshevik revolutions that resulted in the first “socialist state” of the post-feudal world. The oft ignored similarity between these successful uprisings was the fact of a low or non-existent population of Black people, where today our internal populations are still kept low and our ability to participate and claim any stake in revolution kept weak as well through historical underdevelopment. Where existing states with similar characteristics to socialism are not included in that observation, White radicals are often prevented from discovering (by a white supremacist, genocidal, capitalist state and existence), consciously avoid in favor of ideological (ergo racial) “purity”, or find their discovery often times obscured by the oppressive orthodoxy of many Leftist theories. In doing so, they reinforce the unconscious, and sometimes even conscious, racial supremacy all white people benefit from and thus practice through its implementation and allowance, globally.
This manifests in a multitude of ways, from post-racial observations that consciously ignore disparate conditions disproportionately existent in non-white comminities, to the more, subtle neoliberal notions that race is some ancient invention and not a modern one by which many countries practice their multifaceted, hegemonies over the working class. Some White radicals even take a paternalistic stance on non-White socialism/communism, calling it “primitive communism”, thereby invalidating our movements and simultaneously giving ethical/moral/righteous boosts to their own. Most commonly, this truth arises in chauvinistic intellectuals who flex their entitlement over obscurist, Eurocentric non-fiction over the heads of dissident non-white proletariat worldwide.
We are capable of doing the same, but in reality, we are not allowed entitlement to this information because most of our revolutionary history is kept and has been kept from us for centuries. This is why American white people have a larger percentage of officiated Marxists and Leftists than any other racial or ethnic population in America — not to mention the broad range of Natives, Blacks, and other subaltern groups who know the history even sometimes moreso that white radicals, but reject it wholesale or partially due to its Eurocentricity. But who asked for a Left versus Right bipolarization of thought, anyway? And who needs a “third way” if the entire playing field is anti-subaltern? Kudos to your revolutionary prospects, we have similar goals and also much more to accomplish. In proportion, we have nothing to lose, and white radicals, much more save.
I long for the day white radicals begin to see all Black people as Slaves shackled in a prison-industrial complex by tactics ranging from racial profiling to desperation, poverty — laws created to profit from our collective desperation and poverty abound. I long for the day white radicals see Natives as our kin within the Fourth World of internal colonies in this genocidal and fascistic state, forced survive tradition on “reservations” and whatever the white working class allows us through policy.
“The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”, James Baldwin
James Baldwin wrote a painful essay about the ending friendship he had with Norman Mailer, in which he experienced moments in which Blackness inspires White emancipatory dreams, and also experiences how it feels to realize that the inverse (Whiteness inspiring Black emancipation) is impossible:
“The really ghastly thing about trying to convey to a white man the reality of the Negro experience has nothing to do with the fact of color, but has to do with this man’s relationship to his own life. He will face in your life only what he is willing to face in his.” — James Baldwin
All Mailer was able to respond to Baldwin with was “Me too,” on those long nights. Baldwin went on to condemn discourses that utilize exploitation and alienation’s grammar of suffering. Writing about Blacks and Whites in Paris and New York in the 1950s, yet reminiscent of encounters between Slaves and the rhetoric of new republics like revolutionary France and America:
“I am afraid that most of the white people I have ever known impressed me as being in the grip of a weird nostalgia, dreaming of a vanished state of security and order, against which dream, unfailingly and unconsciously, they tested and very often lost their lives.” — James Baldwin
Earlier in the essay, Baldwin touched upon the dilemma of Blacks to inspire White-to-White thought, and White people never being able to inspire Blacks:
“There is a difference between Norman and myself in that I think he still imagines he has something to save, whereas I have never had anything to lose.” — James Baldwin
It is not goodwill, conscious practice, or profit that essentially motivates excessive Blackness from destabilizing civil society’s ontological structure of empathy… And it wasn’t until Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone that Baldwin permitted himself to give up hope and face the fact that the Master/Slave relationship itself was the essence of what Mailer wanted to save.
Not all of these battles for white freedom resulted in socialism, and none resulted in freedom for Blacks and Native Americans. Nevertheless, they were battles fought against tyrannical modes of state rule, such as “taxation without representation”.
However in 2017, with the exponential rise in fascism (evident of capitalism’s decay and final “barbaric yawp”), one would expect over 500 years of genocide and non-wage slavery to expose the failure of precipitant liberation from whites to non-whites in America. It is true, there has never been a Far-Left revolution in America outside of slave revolts. But I consider the broad anarchist movements of the 19th century to be revolutionary in retrospect. Revolution is a long and arduous process in which a period of education is critical, otherwise it is exclusive of proletariat participations. Yet even in this process during 19th century America, white radicals beat down upon non-white activists like Lucy Parsons. And again this example is chalk-full of proactive obscurifications and eurocentric values, as most radicals have no idea that Emma Goldman only referred to Lucy Parsons as a mulatto and not by name, and other anarchists even calling her a nigger, while people like Voltairine de Cleyre stood by and let it all happen. Was everyone racist during this century? No. Obviously, Lucy Parsons, an ex Black slave, was not.
Gaslighting
Often times, conversations on “identity” are consistently disparaged as “divisive” and “reactionary”, not only serving to be reactionary in itself by dog-whistling those of post-racial ideologies, but also further invalidating the nationalist characteristics of movements like that og the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese revolution, and the Black Panther Party’s cultural revolution. Though apparent, this cop-out from opportunistic internal critique and self-critique is only beneficial to white radicals because they claim a fancied, ahistorical impetus to global revolutions for equality where in fact, the majority of far-left revolutions have been non-white , mostly because the “primitive communism”, a true communism so many orthodox Leftists disparage, are both our origin and our destiny (*eg Taino communism).
I argue that it is not divisive to turn a listening ear towards those who are uniquely oppressed as non-white people, but instead that it is divisive and internally tortuous to demand that any racially oppressed person not have a voice against racial oppression. It takes on the form of gaslighting, demanding sovereignty over an idea that belongs to no one, not even Karl Marx.
Regardless, white radicals are uncompromisingly hastened to attach eurocentric theories such as anarchism to non-white movements, as in the case of the NeoZapatismo EZLN, without non-white peoples consent. It also works in a converse, where the moment any radical non-white radical mentions anarchist or Marxist theory, a sort of ideological malapropism occurs where one framework of thought is mistaken and used interchangeably for a context-specific framework, where in this case the organization’s framework is best described by movement/organization instead of ideology. This ideological malapropism is carelessly assigned to an entire movement, ergo to the history of the entire non-white community they belong to. In other words, non-white history is whitewashed, in turn gaslighting generations of non-white radicals seeking viable, beneficial theory and history. This reflects the efforts of oppressive nations that have taken a reactionarily nationalistic stance to ethnic and racial autonomy, representing a disdain for the acknowledgement of a non-white person’s place in history and thus a disdain for any history they make that does not benefit the fascist state itself.
One example is that of the Black Panthers being attributed to Marxist orthodoxy when even they refused the title, instead following the strain of thought that both prominent Marxist thinkers such as Lenin and Chi-Minh followed, believing and practicing Marxist thought as non-dogmatic and flexible to suit the needs of the subaltern (see below excerpt from Black Against Empire). Although these are the orders of Huey P. Newton, many radicals today are quick to co-opt the Black Panthers’ movement as orthodox, when it was always liberally nationalistic and racialized.
Obscuring Non-Whiteness/Normalizing Whiteness
Within the current systems of oppression — neocolonialism, cryptofascism, the protracted genocide of non-white people in every country on Earth — it is only that much more difficult for a Leftist to perceive anti-blackness and anti-indigineity as the impetus of their own oppression, for such is the nature of fascism: the obscurance of material discourse in favor of the spiritual and cultural. They seek liberation against the forces (manifest in capitalism, non-womanist feminism, and a somewhat white gender liberation) that are not unique to white people, but are constituent to what some white people do experience. However, they rarely fight for the rest of us non-whites, whose movements have a much broader scope than what could be imagined by the average white activist. The nuances within our fights for higher wages, better standards of living, and general equality are also obscured from white radicals, regardless of economic background, based on the aforementioned fact.
Many white radicals of today come from middle class backgrounds, not nuch different from the New Left of the 60s and 70s. They do not face racial oppression, nor do they face the hardships of America’s growing working class (working class defined by those able to make living wages). Their oppression is somewhat abstract, globalized, and passed down inter-generationally. They are simultaneously an ontologically ruling class, and also an intellegentsia that seeks an end to the tyranny that is capitalism— often times heavily inspired by the plight of non-white populations not only in the past, but also in the present.
Terms like “wage slave” are thrown around as jokes, while the fact is that the image of the “Slave” is predominantly Black in North America may as well still exist, and so are prime examples of non-White suffering and trauma being appropriated into a romanticized vision of self that White radicals have never experienced nor have had the bad luck of being descendent from. In other words, the metaphor of the genocided Native and that of the enslaved Black, are mobilized into identities for White movements regardless of how true to life they are.
The oppressions white radicals currently face are not racial and much less often due to class exploitation, and are therefore more abstract and removed enough from the face of poverty in America — sometimes enough to make it even seem removed from white lives. Nonetheless, white radicals have a growing importance in the global revolutionary movement. I stress importance, because their value can be very good, or very bad. A quickly growing amount of organizing boosted since Trump’s presidency has been cultivated by non-Black, non-Native radicals inspired to take a stand against neocolonialism both without and within America: in the Philippines, against Israel, in India, Venezuela, and within Black, Brown, and Native American communities in North and South America.
The Mortal, Eternal Return of Whiteness
The current colonial officers (policemen, the National Guard, and government officials themselves) offer no laws that non-White people are due to respect, for their lives are constantly under surveillance and the threat of pain and death that reach metaphysical heights. And you experience none of this as a collective peoples.
Apparent from these truths, white “radicals” of today are aping the bourgeoise revolutions of their pasts with an ontological bent. From invasive maneuvers into Black neighborhoods, to co-opting anti-racism and the anti-colonial ideals of our presrnt time, white radicals continue to hoard an unfair share of activism without due access to non-white radicals who are more often than whites unable to eat 2 meals a day. Without the consistent permission of our consent, or a well-supported autonomy (eg a persistent voice in a revolutionary movement that represents all our concerns), the movements white radicals lead will run a parallel course to that of a revolution which ends in yet another oppressive governance (or non-governance) — this time for non-white people. Because a white radical’s homogenous, post-revolutionary environment is oppressive for non-white people, it can then be said that the true proletariat in this new ecosystem will be made of non-white radicals who don’t play the part of the petite-bourgeoise after a bourgeoise revolution. In the oppressive post-“revolutionary” environment of a white radical, it must be assumed that the next revolution will be against white radicals themselves.
Even after a white Leftist movement succeeds in overthrowing the capitalist order, they will have its colonialist order to confront. Whether or not the capitalist front of a revolution is defeated, non-white radicals will never be able to retire until the colonialist front is also defeated — at least not in the same ways most white American radicals of the 60’s were able to .
Uprooting White Roots in Non-White Pain: A Turning Point
White radicals see the riots of Ferguson and other decolonial uprisings as heroic, often times getting mixed in the process. They look up to us as a source of inspiration for their organizing and their virtues. It can be said that without Black death, even groups such as the ISO would have no stake in building as quickly as they have, even if they rarely approach Black ghettos, prisons, and other “untouchables”.
In a material way, we are their heroes, in the same way many of them look up to Cuba, Vietnam, and Rojava — in the same way that the white Latinx’s Fidel Castro and Che Guevara was directly inspired by the Haitian Revolution.
Maurice Bishop, leader of the Grenadan Leftist revolution, made a speech at Hunter College:
In an anarchist sense, we are the impetus of uncentralized ecological improvements and abolitions on material and ontological aspects of society ; there are many more non-white ecosystems than there are white communities, and thus our range in both suffering and experience is broad as a workers’ survivorship.
In a socialist sense, we non-whites happen to be the vanguard of misery, and thus, the invisible dictatorship of international revolution.
So the question remains:
How is it that a white middle classed anti-fascist can identify with one of us poorer, racially unentitled folk and yet uphold a system of white supremacy with capitalist and even slaveocracy-like motives?
They can not, and they never will be able to.
Yet here we are, most non-whites having already voiced our preference of what you may call communism and socialism over our current capitalist society, and yes still suffering, more than you, in a variety of seperate ways I ought not be obliged to detail. Still, I conclude that agreement upon the theory of these industrial-economic strategies is the only common string we need.
Again, white people can not, and they never will be able to identify as non-white while we all live under a doctrine of white supremacy. Yet they persist in showing up, albeit sometimes and somewhat ineffectively (Occupy), to do what they believe is best they can. The answer to the above question then is that while a white radical can only identify as anti-fascist, or anti-imperialist, they are not constituently anti-racist. In fact, most telling key word in this identification is “white”, and also the fact that white people haven’t addressed slavocracies (especially that of the Arab slave trade being a blueprint to chattel slavery) as a parent of capitalism. This most often stems from Marx’ viewpoint that slavocracies were not capitalist, though they could, have, and continue to exist in capitalist societies via machinations such as the pattern wages in proportion to race contemporary ghettos, mass incarceration, and the prison-industrial complex. It may also be an assumption based on the false idea that ancient slavery of Africans had nothing to do with their skin colors, although primary sources from the rarely-spoken “Arab Slave Trade” proves this wrong as well. This brings us to the conclusion that racism is not an necessary characteristic of capitalism, but has also existed without capitalism. It also exposes the need-a-cause, radical chic performative activism of whites who vocally espouse Black liberation; we must not be convinced that the ontologically privileged are willing to undo themselves and redistribute their power just because we asked them to.
Radical Chic, after all, is only radical in style; in its heart it is part of Society and its traditions. Politics, like Rock, Pop and Camp, has its uses; but to put one’s whole status on the line for nostalgie de la boue in any of its forms would be unprincipled. — Tom Wolfe, “Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny’s”
If Black slavery hasn’t only implemented as a profit motive, what has been its purpose? According to afro-pessimist theorist Frank B. Wilderson III, it is also a means of achieving a sort of metaphysical superiority over Others; constant subjugation to the inter-generationally destructive forces of genocide, mass-rape, and other patronizing realities offer an unlimited and growing range of means of production— to which there will always be a winner (one who benefits), and a loser (one who dies both physically, and socially). In our reality, this is known as white supremacy.
Death becomes social, even cultural, and certainly not limited to an industrial complex. This means that slavery becomes the Black population’s existence, replacing the range of ethnicities once lost, and cultures constantly being lost, on a daily basis. The lived material realities of (what we have essentially been reduced to) Black bodies in effect become a mimeograph for cultural, social, and even capitalist (eg private prisons) means of production across the globe so that even without a capitalist state, white supremacy may still reign.
What, then, does the anti-capitalist, anti-statist, and anti-fascist white radical have to offer the Black descendants and current slaves of aforementioned “slavocracies”?
Nothing but support. It would be more accurate and comprehensive to say that racism, or white-supremacy, is a superstructure and that fascism, statism and capitalism are all tools used to fortify white supremacy.
Another heavily overlooked example of the abandonment of racialized issues on the Left is made apparent in the IWW’s efforts to dissociate from anti-imperialist frameworks of praxis and ideology, this toxic stance eventually taken up by many American Third Worldists today to preserve their whiteness.
“The owners of these factories are making millions out of the murderfest in Europe - their slaves should likewise improve the opportunity to get a little something for themselves… The point may be made here, that we should all be interested in stopping the production of war munitions. Yes, of course, but that’s only a dream ... so the only thing the workers in these factories can do is to try to improve their condition...” — the IWW’s publication called Solidarity (issue July 24, 1915)
The line was very clear. Far from fighting U.S. imperialism, the I.W.W. was spreading defeatism among the workers and urging them to concentrate only on getting a bigger bribe out of the imperialist super-profits. The I.W.W. is often praised by the settler “left” as very “American,” very “grass roots.” We can say that their cynical, individualistic slant that workers can “only get a little something for themselves” out of the slaughter of millions does represent the essence of Amerikan settler degeneracy. In Russia the Bolsheviks were telling the Russian workers to “Turn the Imperialist War into a Revolutionary War” and overthrow the Imperialists — which they did.
The I.W.W.’s pathetic efforts to avoid antagonizing the Bourgeoisie did them little good. The U.S. Empire tired of these pests, viewing the militant organization of immigrant labor as dangerous. Finally cranking its police machinery up, the imperialist state proceeded to smash the defenseless I.W.W. clear into virtual non-existence. It wasn’t even very difficult, since throughout the West vigilante mobs of settlers declared an open reign of terror against the I.W.W. In Arizona some 1,300 miners suspected of I.W.W. involvement were driven from the state at gunpoint.
In July 1918, 101 I.W.W. leaders past and present were convicted in Chicago Federal Court of sabotaging the Imperialist War effort in a rigged trial that dwarfed the “Chicago Conspiracy Trial” of the Vietnam War era. The political verdict was certain even though the prosecution was unable to prove that the I.W.W. had obstructed the war in any way! Only one defendant out of 101 had violated the draft registration laws. While the I.W.W. unions had led strikes that disrupted war production in Western copper and timber, the government was forced to admit that of the 521 disruptive strikes that had taken place since the U.S. Empire entered the war, only 3 were by the I.W.W. (while 519 were by the pro-government A.F.L. unions). (29)
Federal raids on the I.W.W. took place from coast-to-coast. Immigration agents held mass round-ups which resulted in long jail stays while undergoing deportation hearings. In 1917 the Federal agents arrested 34 I.W.W. organizers in Kansas, who eventually got prison terms of up to nine years. In Omaha, Nebraska, the 64 I.W.W. delegates at the Agricultural Workers Organization Convention were arrested and held 18 months without trial. In 21 states “criminal syndicalism” laws were passed, directed at the I.W.W., under which thousands were arrested. In California alone between 1919–1924 some 500 I.W.W. members were indicted, 128 of whom ended up serving prison terms of up to 14 years. (30) The I.W.W. never recovered from these blows, and from 1917 on quickly declined.
Such an unwillingness to fight U.S. imperialism could hardly come from those with anti-imperialist politics. The reason we have to underline this is that for obvious ends the settler “Left” has been emphasizing how the I.W.W. was a mass example of anti-racist labor unity. This poisoned bait has been naively picked up by a number of Third-World revolutionary organizations, and used as one more small justification to move towards revisionist-integrationist ideology.
There is no doubt that much of the I.W.W. genuinely despised the open, white-supremacist persecution of the colonial peoples. Unlike the smug, privileged A.F.L. aristocracy of labor, the I.W.W. represented the voice of those white workers who had suffered deeply and thus could sympathize with the persecuted. But their inability to confront the settleristic ambitions within themselves reduced these sparks of real class consciousness to vague sentiments and limited economic deals.
…
The I.W.W. never attempted to educate the most exploited white workers to unite with the national liberation struggles. Instead, it argued that “racial” unity on the job to raise wages was all that mattered. This is the approach used by the AFL-CIO today; obviously, it’s a way of building a union in which white-supremacist workers tolerate colonial workers. This was the narrow, economic self-interest pitch underneath all the syndicalist talk. The I.W.W. warned white workers: “Leaving the Negro outside of your union makes him a potential, if not an actual, scab, dangerous to the organized workers…” (31) These words reveal that the I.W.W.’s goal was to control colonial labor for the benefit of white workers — and that Afrikans were viewed as “dangerous” if not controlled. So that even in 1919, after two years of severe “race riots” in the North (armed attacks by white workers on Afrikan exile communities), the I.W.W. kept insisting that there was: “…no race problem. There is only a class problem. The economic interests of all workers, be they white, black, brown or yellow, are identical, and all are included in the I.W.W. It has one program for the entire working class — “the abolition of the wage system.” (32) The I.W.W.’s firm position of not fighting the lynch mobs, of not opposing the colonial system, allowed them to unite with the racist element in the factories — and helped prepare the immigrant proletariat for becoming loyal citizens of the Empire. It must never be forgotten that the I.W.W. contained genuinely proletarian forces, some of whom could have been led forward towards revolution. We can see this supposed unity actually at work in the I.W.W.’s relationship to the Japanese workers on the West Coast. In the Western region of the Empire the settler masses were deeply infected with anti-Asian hatred. Much of this at that time was directed at the new trickle of Japanese immigrant laborers, who were working mainly in agriculture, timber and railroads. These Japanese laborers were subjected to the most vicious persecution and exploitation, with the bourgeois politicians and press stirring up mob terror against them constantly. Both the Socialist Party of Eugene Debs and the A.F.L. unions helped lead the anti-Asian campaign among the settler masses. In April 1903, one thousand Japanese and Mexicano sugar beet workers struck near Oxnard, California. They formed the Sugar Beet & Farm Laborers Union, and wrote the A.F.L. asking for a union charter of affiliation. A.F.L. President Samuel Gompers, in his usual treacherous style, tried in his reply to split the ranks of the oppressed: “Your union must guarantee that it will under no circumstances accept membership of any Chinese or Japanese.”
(source: http://www.readsettlers.org/ch6.html#1)
The list of historical racial abandonments on the Left saturate a long list that is not wholly unique to Black history, though all of these abandonments were originally practiced on Black people. Books like Settlers by J. Sakai present a wide range of history not often spoken about in the White and post-racial Left, since it benefits oppressors within the Left to remain silent on these topics. When they are spoken about, it is often in bad faith.
Personally, I find it odd that the supposed “proletariat” of economic society would silence the pains and sufferings of an entire population of (non-white) people apt to be proletarian anti-capitalists, anti-statists, and anti-fascists. But it can’t be strange — because we live within a globally-implemented white supremacist reality.
This is what reproduction of white supremacy looks like, pervasive enough to poison and divide the Left.
Practicing White Supremacy :
“Racist” As An Identity
We know that the US was founded and currently thrives on an unstable base of protracted Black and Red genocide and social death, the kind that turned Africans in to Blacks, and Natives into Reds. Knowing that this is a historically material fact, one can declare that this illegitimate country is white supremacist. And because your identification is “white”, you must understand that you inherently benefit from white supremacy — maybe not economically in obvious ways, but always ontologically, for even the trajectory of success a white person can achieve always overshadows that of a non-white person in America.
So while a white radical may be anti-fascist, they can and often do practice white supremacy. And this is not by accident.
The word “racist” has for too long now been used as a descriptor to identify a person who practices racism. However this implies that there isn’t a global system of hierarchy stemming directly from white supremacy that materializes in systemic, overt, and individualized situations of racism and colorism. So no, not everyone can be racist.
There are racists, and there are non-racists, and all racists benefit. Therefore, whites are placed ontologically above all non-whites while this system of white supremacy exists. Therefore, in order for a white radical to truly be revolutionary in throwing this entirely unnatural way of being to the wayside, they would also have to learn and adopt the ways in which they can be anti-racist and decolonial. It is impossible for a baseline movement towards liberation from capitalism to “trickle down” into the subaltern ranks of us non-whites, especially since capitalism is only one way in which we can be, and currently are oppressed.
I stress the potential of “best they can” because it is impossible for a white person to not reproduce systems and ontologies of systemic racism that radicals such as myself have faced within Leftist spaces — from being told that I am “appropriating womanhood” to being told that I can’t speak about ny experiences growing up in a South Bronx ghetto because I am not Jewish (implying ghettos are constituently an anti-Jewish invention of the past). And so it may seem as if I am suggesting that white radicals have no use, yet I assure you that this is not the case.
In emulating non-white originating methods of organizing such as breakfast programs, white radicals are ineffectively appropriating and seizing non-white liberation for their own. They’ve become caricatures of modern-day revolutions in homogenously non-white countries such as in the Phillipines and India, and are even poked fun at in film such as Okja, where the character of the assimilated Korean activist (“K”) of the fictional** and non-violent activist group Animal Liberation Front purposefully(?) misinterprets the main character’s (Mija) wishes to return Okja to the mountains, ending their interaction with “… Try learning English, it opens new doors.” K later admits it was exciting, implying that he did so sake of enjoyment over integrity. It takes this admission of white-born guilt and thus the validation and upholding of a non-white [Mija’s] voice to turn the entire story around. I won’t ruin the story any further, but I highly recommend this movie by the socialist director Bong Joon-ho.
White radicals they fight using these tactics, whether willingly or unknowingly, whether it has a Black or Brown or Native face, the goal of the tactic will always fall short of our liberation due to the simple fact that white radicals are not acknowledging their inspiration, and in effect, not acknowledging the decolonial, anti-imperialist vanguard, or invisible dictatorship of liberation for all mankind: non-White people. For even in anarchist circles, the neglect of non-white communities is in effect a practice of white supremacy, and so even in communities where the concept of vanguardism is obsolete, non-white theory ought to be upheld — any anti-PoC opinion being voiced against this being nothing more than a derision.
They make stands against the alt-right, stands specifically against Nazis, rightfully deciding that they offer no platform, while in the same motion benefiting from the unchecked white supremacy within their own homes, and refusing to give non-white people a voice of their own. Even in death, white activists receive more attention and material gain than that of any Black person. How? By simply not seeking out non-white, radical opinions to speak for them as the vanguard of Anti-Fascist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist movements in North America. And this is a shame that ought not be permanent.
Becoming Race Traitors
White-led revolution has never precipitated downwards to subaltern lives of the working class unless those same subaltern lives are centered — as in Rojava with the YPJ, or generally in the Zapatista movement of Chiapas.
I have met at least 5 other Black women who have experienced racism on the Left and have since then found it that much harder to find a solution that answers non-white workers’ needs. Avoiding the Right comes naturally for us, and the Center just as much. But now we are stuck outside the dichotomous spectrum due to a disregard for our own identities — our own existence. Without ceasing to exist, we are desperate for a medium or organizationally effort to make demands at minimum, and to “take break” as a community.
We want to be Leftists without experiencing racism, among the many other ontological oppressions we suffer (often times three-fold). Being class conscious in capitalisticly oppressive environment is not constituent to a wholesome movement against oppression. Abolishing the one common thread among us does not necessitate the demolition of all threats to humanity’s wellbeing. In fact, such a narrow-minded (and by proxy, Eurocentric) view of liberation hinders it and produces false “counter-revolutionaries” in the process.
We all want to obliterate the Right, but non-whites want to abolish white-centric authority as well, without being disparaged by other Leftists.
But how can we do that when we are further ostracized by white Leftists and their “house-coloreds”? How can we ideologically homogenize a mass movement that leads to a final and momentuously obstinate abolition of this genocidal, capitalist police state without breaking the movement into class reductionists strains of Leftism that mimic white supremacy invalidation and spycraft tactics (eg. snitchjacketing)?
Some white radicals are least vocally sincere in creating an ontological space for Blacks in response to the Middle Passage’s methodical approach to creating Black placelessness — the lack of origin (and therefore land) beyond slavery for many African-Americans. They seem sincere in protecting immigrants escaping poverty in second, third, and fourth world colonies (hands off Latin America, withdraw from the Black and Native inter-colonial masses, hands off women and transgendered folk like myself), but it still seems more performative than likely. Many have answered the question of how quickly they’d disparage reactionary family members during a revolution, but have failed to address how they’ve utilized material wealth and services from racist family members for the betterment of Amerika’s subaltern: Black people, who represent any population of oppressed peoples one can perceive. We can catalyze the materialization of the more pristine moral standards your problematic favorites often times only expressed. But in order to do so, we need a voice of our own. And we need material provisions.
To have a voice means to have non-white opinions and theory preferred over eurocentric theory, and for white theorists who speak for non-white people to take a seat and let us speak for ourselves. Some may be ahistorical, faulty, or even counter-revolutionary in their opinon or theory, but that is for non-white Leftists (the subaltern anarchists/vanguard communists of spaces in America) to judge, and for white Leftists to adhere to by staying in their lane, because their insistence and intrusion into our spaces has historically proven to be harmful. And with our voice, a coherent movement can be built through the synthesized criticisms and improvements we make on those problematic favorites. If you can’t allow us the space, some day we will have to take it ourselves. But if you can give us free gun training, free weapons for self-defense, free housing, free security culture workshops and the like, we can work together to build. There is enough for everyone, and therefore, no need for hoarding fron non-White people.
And so we must ask our accomplices, those willing to adhere to the principle of “liberation at any means necessary “, those race traitors and class traitors, to consider our autonomy on the matter, or more accurately, the lack thereof.
Strength lies behind the ranks of organization. It is time for White-dominant organizations to turn inwards— to clear their ranks of rapists, racists, and other discriminatory practitioners. In doing so, the abolition of this capitalist, genocidal, imperialist state will be abolished with a concentrated effort driven into the belly of this Moloch filled with hot air, like a pin to a balloon; out will spill the breath we all deserve, simply because the racist has sought to undo themself in an effort to organize against supremacy at large.
Material Needs in Ontological Dimensions
Consider that many of us are not able to organize for a plethora of reasons: because we will not be able to walk off court as easily as you do, our trials often will go umtelevised lest we are painted the superpredators we have been since Touissant’s revolution and earlier. Our deaths are many more than what is videotaped and doled out across the internet like trauma porn, with Native deaths by colonial policemen being at least 50% higher this year than last year… All of us non-whites live behind the frontlines of racism and colorisms, with dark-skinned Black people at the lowest rung of the hierarchy. But we remain capable, nonetheless, given the tools. In short, nothing that the White has lived is unique to the Native, and more particularly, the Black, who has survived those miseries and much more for at least 14 Centuries — those years which would heavily inspire European slave trade of Africans.
So, here we have a situation in which White radicals are doing most of the organizing, while the rest of us were born into surviving a constantly country-revolutionary environment, moreso than white radicals of today.
White Leftists, primarily, ought to align themselves with the anti-imperialist struggles not only around the world, but also within their own backyard — with non-white radicals struggling to organize within our own spaces.
Secondly, they ought to make decisions on who they recognize as comrades. This requires white radicals see us as people eg. if you cant name the living, Black radicals you "listen to" when it comes to understanding anti-Blackness, perhaps you never saw us as People with Names from the start.
White radicals must also understand the material distinctions between praxis and theory: Do you align with the puritanical platitudes of Jacobin, or do you recognize the revolutionary and high-key nuance of Bobby London and Frank B. Wilderson? Are you invested in the NeoZapatismo and Naxal movements, or do you spend your time wearing transantagonistic knit wear for neoliberal Nasty Girl marches?
These are direct opposites. These are dichotomous choices are to be made because they are direct opposites, the spectrum itself leaning to either. From post-race racism, to purveyors of the Irish slave myth, us non-white radicals have encountered it all and we are tired of it.
The rest of us, non-whites, want to destroy this system of oppression entirely, some of us live the experience without a peep of consent ever muttered from our mouths since birth… And the rest, benefit off our suffering by taking up too much space with social capital, and by being inspired by our deaths and suffering.
After white revolutionaries make these choices, they have an obligation to act. After you make revolutionary choices, white radicals can be made truly revolutionary through unhinged support of Black, Brown, and Native struggle against oppression.
Revolution does not precipitate from the oppressing class down to those it has oppressed. Revolution spreads across the land, and to the sky, like wildfire.
We demand that white racists, and racist policemen withdraw. When we are attacked by colonial officers, when a rapist is within our ranks, when a racist is identified by one of us, the white Leftists of academia, Antifa, and all other revolutionary whites ought to respond by defending us without question. We have nothing to lose and you have so much to save.
Recognize us as your revolutionary muses. Let us show you what our liberation will look like .
In the end, it comes down to you giving us the gun, literally, or we will someday find ourselves taking it. “But what am I supposed to do!? I am a ‘poor’ white person [with internet access] and the ability to read!?” If you can’t give us the gun, it is your obligation to support self-defense of the Black, Brown, and other non-White colonies we live in— a fraction of examples including: crowdfunding and carpooling for gun training, free guns, ammo, armor, knives, breakfasts and dinners, education (like translating obscurist academic pieces into vernacular, or classes for Brown and Black folks on socialism), and most importantly, safer space where we will be able to do it all on our own — for free, because we all know more whites have spare private properties (whether land or self-defense measures) than not. Why hoard?
Use your imagination to support our liberation, not to dig us further into a hole for your own liberation. Allow us a voice where white supremacy doesn’t. Validate our call outs, stay out of our call-ins. Allow us consent, respect our humanly-deserved autonomy. If anything, we know more about what our communities want than you ever will.
Different white anarchists find different ways of minimizing race, depending on their analysis. But a common thread seems to be the perennial colonial belief that for salvation — or hell, just for us to get along, the Other must become like me. On the one hand, this could be the insistence that white supremacy is nothing but a tool and invention of capitalism, perfectly explainable in economic terms, and that for people of color to liberate themselves, they must surrender whatever particular experience and history the world’s ever present reaction to their skin color may have given them, and identify primarily as workers, with nothing but fictive barriers standing between them and the white anarchists sitting in their union halls waiting for a little diversity to wander in. The minimization of race can also mask itself behind a misuse of the recognition that race is an invention without physiological justification. I’ve heard many anarchists take this further to say that race does not exist. I imagine this could come as a slap in the face to a great many of the world’s people, it certainly contradicts my own lived experiences, and it is also a supremely idiotic statement. By definition something that does not exist cannot cause results in the real world. I think most anarchists who make this statement would be horrified by someone who denied the existence of racism, but they must be using another kind of denial, that which accompanies abusive relations, to not see this is exactly what they have just done. (Other anarchists take a more dishonest but unassailable route by simple denouncing as “identity politics” any excessive preoccupation with race). Race is a harmful categorization that must be abolished, and like capitalism or the state it cannot be wished away or solved by exclusion from one’s analysis any more than AIDS or the scars of a beating can be wished away. The liberal “color blind” mentality to which so many anarchists adhere can only be a way of prolonging white supremacy. Until white anarchists of all stripes allow — no, encourage — anarchism to adapt to non-white stories, anarchism is likely to remain about as relevant to most people of color as voting is to immigrants. And as long as anarchists continue to view differences in the same way the state and civilization we oppose has taught us to, we will never encompass the breadth of perspective and participation we need to win.” — Peter Gelderloos
suggested reading: Black Against Empire, The History of White People, Smack a White Boy Round 2, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
- I do not hold the view that Taino communism was in any way “primitive”. I believe that Marx undermined communist societies that existed before he branded his theory (non-white material histories), and therefore, as the “father of communist theory”, whitewashed and erased non-white histories.
**I do not believe this ALF was based on the real-life ALF but I am open to suggestions of interpretation.
