There is a long tradition of left-of-center politics in the United States. But too often when reading positions espoused by white political activists, writers, bloggers, and pundits who have dubbed themselves progressive, left of center, radical, or even liberal, they speak as if the mantle of the left does not fall across the shoulders of black Americans and other people of color.
Recently, the mere mention of ‘black’ has come under attack from some segments of this erstwhile left. It has been dubbed ‘identity politics’ and dismissed as irrelevant in the struggle to re-engage ‘the working class’ by the ‘progressive’ wing of the Democratic Party.
A line from Marvin Gaye’s Inner City Blues sums up how I feel about much of this: "Makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands."
Too often the “we progressives” line does not include me and mine and the long unbroken stream of my political ancestors and mentors—everyone from Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and W.E.B. Du Bois through A Philip Randolph, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis, to Black Lives Matter and the Rev. William Barber. The hundreds of articles moaning and bewailing Democrats' inability to engage “the working class” completely dismisses the fact that the majority of black folks here in the United States are working class. By 2032 the majority of the entire working class will be people of color.
This is an appeal to those of you who write, speechify to, and organize Democrats: The default position and norm in all things political and demographic is not white—nor is it male.
Part of the problem is that the history of progressive, left, and radical activism in the U.S. by black folks and other people of color gets parceled off into “black history” or “civil rights history” boxes as if it isn’t just part of U.S. political history.
A mythology acceptable to mostly white folks has developed, centered on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and non-violence as the symbol of our struggles. But that erases the complex intersections of black American political activity which have included self-defense, black power, union organizing against racist bosses and white unions, socialism, and Pan-Africanism, all alongside fighting for the right to vote and participate in the electoral process.
There is no way to cover the entirety of what is often left out of the understanding of the ”left” when it comes to the question of racism and black struggles to survive in this society. So this will simply touch upon some of the history, which might illuminate a more comprehensive perspective for those who may be unfamiliar with part—or all—of it.
Let’s start with W.E.B. Du Bois, simply because much of the wrangling about the last Democratic primary, and current factionalism around the future of the Democratic Party, has devolved into “class versus race” diatribes—which are not new. Du Bois, a committed socialist, addressed this in "Socialism and the Negro Problem" in 1913.
One might divide those interested in Socialism into two distinct camps: On the one hand, those farsighted thinkers who are seeking to determine from the facts of modern industrial organization just what the outcome is going to be; on the other hand, those who suffer from the present industrial situation and who are anxious that, whatever the broad outcome may be, at any rate the present suffering which they know so well shall be stopped.
It is this second class of social thinkers who are interested particularly in the Negro problem. They are saying that the plight of 10,000,000 human beings in the United States, predominantly of the working class, is so evil that it calls for much attention in any program of future social reform. This paper, however, is addressed not to this class, but rather to the class of theoretical Socialists; and its thesis is: In the Negro problem, as it presents itself in the United States, theoretical Socialism of the twentieth century meets a critical dilemma.
There is no doubt as to the alternative presented. On the one hand, here are 90,000,000 white people who, in their extraordinary development, present a peculiar field for the application of Socialistic principles; but on the whole, these people are demanding to-day that just as under capitalistic organization the Negro has been the excluded (i.e., exploited) class, so, too, any Socialistic program shall also exclude the 10,000,000. Many Socialists have acquiesced in this program. No recent convention of Socialists has dared to face fairly the Negro problem and make a straightforward declaration that they regard Negroes as men in the same sense that other persons are. The utmost that the party has been able to do is not to rescind the declaration of an earlier convention. The general attitude of thinking members of the party has been this: We must not turn aside from the great objects of Socialism to take up this issue of the American Negro; let the question wait; when the objects of Socialism are achieved, this problem will be settled along with other problems.
Reminds me of those who today espouse the “let’s focus on economic inequality and the problem of racism will resolve itself after we have achieved that goal” mentality.
His conclusion:
The only basis on which one can even approach these people with a plea for the barest tolerance of colored folk, is that the murder and mistreatment of colored men may possibly hurt white men. Consequently, the Socialist Party finds itself in this predicament: If it acquiesces in race hatred, it has a chance to turn the tremendous power of Southern white radicalism toward its own party; if it does not do this, it becomes a "party of the Negro," with its growth South and North decidedly checked. There are signs that the Socialist leaders are going to accept the chance of getting hold of the radical South, whatever its cost. This paper is written to ask such leaders: After you have gotten the radical South and paid the price which they demand, will the result be Socialism?
Does this sound familiar? It’s reminiscent of the voices urging Democrats to tailor appeals to the white people who voted for Trump and to stop focusing on issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.
One of the other complaints I hear from Democrats of a certain persuasion is about the decline of unions, and the loss of white union workers as a part of the Democratic Party base. We know that manufacturing is in decline in the U.S. and the power of the big unions has waned, shifting more to public sector, health, and service worker unions populated by people of color. But rarely do we hear a discussion of the history of how the big unions failed to address the issue of racism.
I worked for a period of time with the organizers of “revolutionary unity movements” who were organizing black and Latino workers in groups like the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Though short-lived, these groups were a natural outgrowth of the work of A. Philip Randolph and other organizers of the Union of Sleeping Car Porters.
A. Muhammad Ahmad gives a brief history of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers on the History is a Weapon website.
To approach a study of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, an independent Black radical workers' formation in Detroit, as a consequence of the Black liberation movement, several questions should be answered in the research We should ask ourselves the history of Black workers' relations in white unions. Also, is there any particular phenomenon that contributed to the League emerging in Detroit rather than in any other city? While the scope of this paper is too short to address itself directly to these questions, it is hoped that some underlying factors tracing the development of the League are answered. The purpose here is to present an objective analysis of the historical factors leading to the development and demise of the League.
In order to adequately address the LRBW as an organizational development within the broader context of the Black liberation movement, it is necessary to make a few preliminary remarks concerning Black workers in unions, particularly the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the automobile industry.
Black workers involvement in large numbers began during the first imperialist war, when there was a shortage of laborers and Detroit was becoming the center of the auto industry. In 1910, there were only 569 Blacks out of 105,759 auto workers. During the war, thousands of southerners, both Black and white migrated to Detroit in search of work, By 1930, there were 25,895 Blacks among the industry's 640.474 workers.
The southern whites who migrated to Detroit brought with them racist attitudes. The large Polish minority who made up a large proportion of the work force in the auto plants began to display the same prejudice against Black workers after the southerners came. The auto industry was one of the last major industries in the United states to hire large numbers of Black workers. Blacks were excluded from regular jobs in most auto plants. Until 1935 only the Ford River Rouge plant hired Black workers in large numbers, Black workers who did work in auto plants were confined to janitorial work or to the unpleasant back-breaking foundry jobs that white men did not want. Except in the Rouge plant, they were barred from skilled work.
Approximately one half of the Negroes in the industry were employed by the Ford Motor industry and 99 percent of these in the huge River Rouge plant. The Negro employees of General Motors and Chrysler were also concentrated in a few plants: Buick No. 70 in Flint, Pontiac foundry in Pontiac, Chevrolet forge in Detroit and Chevrolet Grey- Iron Foundry in Saginaw - all of General Motors; and Main Dodge of Chrysler in a Detroit suburb, Few Negroes were employed in automobile plants outside of Detroit. (a)
Of the auto manufacturers, Ford developed a policy of hiring ten per cent Blacks in his work force at the River Rouge plant. the story goes that at the beginning of the 1921 depression, Black workers employed at river Rouge and Black middle-class leaders from Detroit approached Ford and talked about his racist bias in layoffs. Ford is then said to have changed his hiring policy at river Rouge. He placed Black workers in all departments and occupations at the plant. But he didn't extend this policy beyond River Rouge. Ford assembly plants in the South only employed Black workers as janitors and porters. However, Ford's employment policy won him loyalty of the Black community, particularly the Black church. Ford -made financial contributions to selected Black churches; he would then use the ministers as employment agents. Black workers were hired when they presented a written recommendation form the minister to company officials. Pork chop ministers loved Ford's assistance because It increased church attendance, helped the church financially and strengthened their community leadership positions.Thus once receiving Ford's approval, a minister would willingly follow Ford's anti-labor position.
When A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was invited in 1938 to speak sit a Negro church, those of its members who were employed at Ford were threatened with firing. After Randolph spoke, some were actually dismissed and frankly told that Randolph's speech was the reason.(B).
Too few of us know the names or activities of those brothers and sisters who fought for the rights of black workers—people like General Baker.
On Feb 15, 2014, during the Black Men in Unions Institute at University of Michigan-Dearborn Campus, I had the honor of interviewing one of my heroes in labor, a UAW Brother, General Baker. In this exclusive interview, the General shares some important history and lessons about organizing and the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). His insightfullness, humor and militancy provide us with a clear understanding of his down to earth character and his commitment to others. General Baker left us on May 18, 2014, with a proud legacy to uphold!
In the interview, General Baker refers to the documentary Finally Got the News:
FINALLY GOT THE NEWS is a forceful, unique documentary that reveals the activities of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers inside and outside the auto factories of Detroit. Through interviews with the members of the movement, footage shot in the auto plants, and footage of leafleting and picketing actions, the film documents their efforts to build an independent black labor organization that, unlike the UAW, will respond to worker's problems, such as the assembly line speed-up and inadequate wages faced by both black and white workers in the industry.
Beginning with a historical montage, from the early days of slavery through the subsequent growth and organization of the working class, FINALLY GOT THE NEWS focuses on the crucial role played by the black worker in the American economy. Also explored is the educational 'tracking' system for both white and black youth, the role of African American women in the labor force, and relations between white and black workers.
"Although most histories of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements give greater attention to [other groups]... the League [of Revolutionary Black Workers] was in many respects the most significant expression of black radical thought and activism in the 1960s. The League took the impetus for Black Power and translated it into a fighting program focusing on industrial workers." —Manning Marable, Director, Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Professor of History, Columbia University
When I wrote about Ida B. Wells-Barnett recently I did not address her stance on self-defense.
In “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases,” she wrote:
"Of the many inhuman outrages of this present year, the only case where the proposed lynching did not occur, was where the men armed themselves in Jacksonville, Fla., and Paducah, Ky, and prevented it. The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense.
The lesson this teaches and which every Afro-American should ponder well, is that a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life."
Black Americans have lived under and through terror and terrorism since we were dragged here in chains. What we faced and continue to face to live our lives and what we risk even to vote or simply walk down the streets each day must be addressed by the Democratic Party and those people who consider themselves to be progressive. In a review of Negroes and the Gun: A Winchester “in every Black home” in the Washington Post, Prof. Nicholas Johnson wrote:
For the philosophical grounding of the Black tradition of arms, we look more to the literate, leadership class. And here we might worry how much the rhetoric really matched practical commitment. This worry is diminished by the evidence that many in the leadership class truly did walk it as they talked it. As tomorrow’s post will show, this is vividly demonstrated in the words and deeds of America’s preeminent Black intellectual, W.E.B. Dubois, who paced the floor following the 1906 Atlanta race riot, with “a Winchester double-barreled shotgun and two dozen rounds of shells filled with buckshot.” And within the bourgeoning leadership class of the early twentieth century, Dubois is just the tip of the story.
I examined one segment of this history in "Deacons for Defense." Charles Cobb, a veteran activist of the civil rights movement, takes a look at a part of the movement he lived through in This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible.
Visiting Martin Luther King, Jr. at the peak of the civil rights movement, the journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. “Just for self-defense,” King assured him. One of King's advisors remembered the reverend's home as “an arsenal.” Like King, many nonviolent activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection—yet this crucial dimension of the civil rights struggle has been long ignored.
In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb, Jr. reveals how nonviolent activists and their allies kept the civil rights movement alive by bearing—and, when necessary, using—firearms. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these men and women were crucial to the movement's success, as were the weapons they carried. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the Southern Freedom Movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb offers a controversial examination of the vital role guns have played in securing American liberties.
Why do I bring this up? Am I advocating for armed self-defense? No. I simply want to point out that the history of the black left in this country has not been a simple matter of marching and sit-ins and laying down letting cops and racists beat the shit out of us while we sang We Shall Overcome. Nor has it been theoretical discussions of oppression in the academy. When someone tells us that they “marched with Dr. King” (meaning they attended the March on Washington organized by A. Phillip Randolph and Bayard Rustin) it indicates that their view of our life and death struggle to both survive and embrace our own brand of “leftism,” which incorporates a deep-seated understanding of both race and class —and danger from racists—just isn’t there.
Black radicals throughout our history in this country have put their lives and freedom on the line. We have not only had to confront the virulent racial hate that permeates our system, we have also had to deal with racism from the white left. It is because we know we are all born into a world where racism is a part of the very air we breathe that we continue to try to educate and build coalitions with that left.
Too often when those of us who are black or people of color address white privilege and racism that also affects the left in this country, we get charged with being racist. The false image painted by J. Edgar Hoover and much of the white media of the historical Black Panther Party as a racist organization belies the history of the first Rainbow Coalition.
Contrary to what many people know about rainbows in association with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the original concept came from Fred Hampton.
The Rainbow Coalition was a coalition active in the late 1960s and early 1970s, founded in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the activist Black Panther Party, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman, Jack (Junebug) Boykin, Bobby Joe Mcginnis and Hy Thurman of the Young Patriots Organization and the founder of the Young Lords as a civil and human rights movement Jose Cha Cha Jimenez. It later expanded to include various radical socialist groups and community groups like the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition.[2] It was associated with the rising Black Power movement, which mobilized some African-American discontent and activism by other ethnic minority groups after the passage of the mid-1960s civil rights legislation under Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson.
The coalition also included later members of various local ethnic groups, among whom Hampton, the Young Patriots, and the Young Lords under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez with in the community. They brokered treaties to end crime and gang violence. The leaders worked to reduce conflict by the treaties, as they believed that poor youths' fighting each other in gang wars achieved little benefit for them. Hampton and his colleagues believed that the Daley Machine in Chicago and the American ruling class used gang wars to consolidate their own political positions by gaining funding for law enforcement and dramatizing crime rather than underlying social issues
Organizations in the Rainbow Coalition:
This clip from the documentary The Murder of Fred Hampton shows Chairman Fred addressing a mixed audience about a cross cultural socialist movement
It’s no surprise why Fred was assassinated.
Too often, when progressive segments of the Democratic Party are discussed, Ron Dellums is overlooked. Dellums had close ties to Panthers in Calforniq who helped him get elected to Congress. One of the other founding members of the Progressive Caucus is Maxine Waters, who many of us affectionately dub “Auntie Maxine." Her roots in the black working-class community span decades, from the time of her birth.
Waters was born in 1938 in Kinloch, Missouri, the daughter of Velma Lee (née Moore) and Remus Carr. Fifth out of thirteen children, Waters was raised by her single mother once her father left the family when Maxine was two. She graduated from Vashon High School in St. Louis, and moved with her family to Los Angeles, California, in 1961. She worked in a garment factory and as a telephone operator before being hired as an assistant teacher with the Head Start program at Watts in 1966. She later enrolled at Los Angeles State College (now California State University, Los Angeles) and graduated with a sociology degree in 1970.
Not all black activists are willing to become Democrats, especially some of the younger ones, at this point in their political process. It took me many years to go from Young Lord and Black Panther to an understanding of why I needed to join the Democratic Party. Outside of the Party, I have placed my support these days in the Moral Mondays movement, which builds coalitions between and among groups in the same way Fred did—minus armed self-defense and Marxism.
Like many of my comrade sisters and brothers I grow very uneasy when I hear about people who purport to be of the left, who are willing to endanger the Democratic Party base which includes me and mine to chase after those who have openly supported and sustained a group who has been the enemy of my people’s progress.
Watering down our stance on racism, ignoring criminal injustice and incarceration, rampant xenophobia, immigration issues and deportations, and the blatant misogyny of this culture which puts me as a black woman in double jeopardy will endanger what it has taken us a long time to build.
Those of you who are flapping your gums pointing at black folks who voted for Hillary with snide attacks about “neo-liberalism” or “corporate shill” rhetoric need to wake up and smell the cafe con leche and get a grip. 'Cause you really don’t have a clue about our history, what we have faced in the past, and what we face today.
Working class does not mean “white.” Neither does “progressive.” There are plenty of us who were honed in pragmatism walking through fires that could have meant our deaths—and still could.
We have a lot of work to do within the Democratic Party and outside of it in our communities. Faced with an orange fascist in the White House and a rabid group of racist Republicans in power, our job has doubled in difficulty. We can only win if we are in this fight together.
That means those of you who are white need to do a little critical thinking about race and racism in America—and stop dismissing what we have to say about it.