Note by Hunterbear: The editorial committee of DSA's publication, Democratic Left, has knifed an article of mine on American racism. The article was solicited and the reason for this ["too long" -- given very belatedly] is not, frankly, convincing.
I've written and published widely for almost 50 years. This has virtually never happened. Anyone, I should add, who is interested in my writing and publishing history and activism [as well as my Native American background and family, culture, or anything else] can find much on this Personal Background Narrative page on our large Lair of Hunterbear website. Simply go to http://www.hunterbear.org/narrative.htm I joined the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee via a coupon in In These Times around 1978 while on the Navajo Reservation -- and have been an essentially consistent member of DSOC/DSA ever since. When DSOC merged with NAM to become DSA, an Anti-Racism Commission developed which I've loyally supported all the way through. Last Summer, when a long-standing promise by DSA to the Anti-Racism Commission -- a special issue of Democratic Left devoted to Commission articles -- began to gel, Duane Campbell, the excellent Commission Chair, asked me to do a survey piece on American racism. I was glad to do so and did. The deadline was mid-November and I had my article in a month before that. No space limitations had been given but I kept the piece in what's generally a very reasonable spatial frame. The article has been viewed quite favorably by a wide range of representative and honorably critical individuals to whom I sent it. I learned shortly after I sent Duane Campbell the piece that this special anti-racism issue, however, rested in the hands of the DL Editorial Committee. None of this is any negative reflection on Duane. The upshot is that I've just learned [12/24] that Democratic Left isn't publishing my article, The reason, passed on to me by Duane from its Managing Editor, Kathy Quinn, is that "it is much too long." This is patently limp and weak. No one got back to me with any request to shorten it. Very ample time existed for that. In any event, here is the article -- a survey piece on American racism -- done from my many decades of experience in actively dealing with racism and related poisons. It is also on our large website. I have no way of knowing but, if any appropriate outfit wishes to use it, please contact me. Hunter [Hunterbear] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Also, fortunately, a member of SPUSA, Solidarity, CCDS AMERICAN RACISM: AN ORGANIZER'S REFLECTIONS By Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] October 15, 2002 As a long-time social justice organizer -- and frequent professor -- I've often found it useful to use graphic and sometimes even sanguinary examples in trenchantly and quickly making basic points. Like, on prejudice and discrimination, I might say, "If someone doesn't like someone, that's prejudice -- an attitude; and if whoever shoots someone because of that attitude, well, that's an act -- that's discrimination." And of the closely related twin evils of racism and ethnocentrism, I'll sometimes say, "And if whoever is doing the shooting tries to justify that by saying the target isn't really human -- that's racism. But if it's put on the basis that, although the victim is human, the person's culture -- total way of life -- is deemed inferior, now that's called cultural ethnocentrism." There's still a great deal of confusion about what racism and ethnocentrism are and aren't. They're certainly big components of that river of poison that's so antithetical to humankind -- along with all of the other anti-people isms -- that must come from a murky and fog-bound headwaters full of goblins and demonic bats. Racism -- the effort to deny the biological humanity of the victim -- is the most dangerous nonsense that humanity has yet produced. While Anthros talk of various racial stocks -- Negroid, Caucasoid, Australoid, Mongoloid [with many including Native Americans as Mongoloid and others placing Natives as a separate group]-- there is certainly, of course, extremely pervasive consensus among Anthropologists and all scientists [and has been for many generations], that"racial differences" are extremely skimpy, superficial -- and have nothing to do with any intelligence qualities or basic physical abilities. Further, there is wide recognition that there is no longer any pure or completely "full-blooded" racial category anywhere among humankind. A weird concept that waxes a bit now and then, and wanes a great deal, involves the presumption that specific "racial memory" and "knowledge" are conveyed genetically. Known as "biological essentialism" or "biological reductionism," this is quack nonsense -- generally not initially racist in its own right -- but very much open to a downward drift or plunge into that plain old and very dangerous super-toxin of biological fantasy. And that's certainly happened in some instances. Racism -- and this is often surprising to many -- is historically new. It began to develop, and not all that vaguely, in the late 1400s and early 1500s as western Europe moved into the non-White sections of the world seeking land and resources, ports and booty, and slaves. From the outset, it was the basic rationalization for genocide and slavery. Very quickly indeed, the Roman Catholic Church condemned racism in a series of Papal pronouncements which correctly recognized the horrific nature of this anti-human, fast developing, and thoroughly destructive doctrine. And, of course, the Church was also very much interested in the conversion of the non-Whites -- and a bona fide conversion always has to be predicated on a recognition of the basic human equality of the intended convert. These major denunciations of racism carried heavy weight in Spain, Portugal, France. But the fast developing Protestant Reformation saw England and Holland break with Rome -- and, quickly, those two nations came early-on to embrace racism as national doctrine. If, as one enslaved and killed, one also denied the basic humanity of the target victim -- you didn't have to worry a whit about Christian strictures. And, more than any other culture of Europe, that of England permeated the ruling circles of the colonies north of Mexico -- and racism became national doctrine in the eventual United States, Canada, and some other places in the world once ruled by the Court of St. James. Neither the American Revolution nor the Civil War overthrew that Evil in the United States. Its economic base -- massive anti-Native genocide, far-flung Black slavery, the theft of much of Mexico, and then the quasi-slave sharecropper system and cheap labor generally in a racially divided anti-union atmosphere -- was paramount. So was the major role of racism in maintaining the political power of an Anglo elite. And the skeleton hand of racism is still, from the shadows, de facto doctrine throughout much indeed of the U.S.A. Cultural ethnocentrism -- essentially a "cultural superiority complex," is as old as humankind -- and can easily run close behind racism as extraordinarily dangerous and enduringly tangible myth. Racism, since it seeks to deny the basic humanity of the victim, is always inherently ethnocentric -- since, if one presumes the victim to be biologically inferior, it certainly "follows" that his or her culture is also substandard. But cultural ethnocentrism has flourished very widely in its own right. Carried beyond quietly private and mildly and humanly widespread smug pride, it's also been consistently used throughout human history to justify genocide and seizure of land and resources -- and slavery and cheap labor and the maintenance of elitist power generally. Sometimes centered on theology -- "the only bona fide religion" -- it usually moves much more broadly, trumpeting the alleged superiority of one way of life over another. The targets of ethnocentrism are frequently, but not always, non-White peoples and their cultures. And here, false and dangerous terms like "primitive" and "civilized" are thrown to the four directions. The Catholic countries -- especially Spain and Portugal and France and later Italy -- often carried ethnocentrism into dimensions just as deadly as racism. But, usually, if the target victim [again generally non-White] renounced [or appeared to renounce] his/her original culture and adopted that of the European ethnocentric, he/she was pronounced essentially equal [or almost so!] to the oppressor. If the victim did not renounce, hard and lethal stuff often followed fast. And coming from many directions indeed, cultural ethnocentrism has permeated the wounded and often outrightly tortured turf throughout the entire New World. The realities, of course, are that ethnocentric terms like "primitive" and "civilized" should be dumped and never used. Every society and its culture has its own special origin and vision and unique history and destiny. Linear ranking is cruelly fallacious -- and sometimes with hideous results. The only way that any culture can be even generally evaluated is to measure its own realities against its own ideals. In what's called the United States, Blacks have been consistent targets of racism. Native Americans and Chicanos and Asians have, depending on local and regional history and circumstance, been subjected to either racism or cultural ethnocentrism. And often, to the victims, the differences have been moot. But the inherent drive for a full measure of liberty and bread-and-butter and dignity is universal in the Circle of the Creation. Always, the victims of this oppressive travail have consistently fought back with vigor and vision and courage -- and they always will. A major epoch in all of this was the great civil rights struggle in the United States of the latter 1950s into the 1970s. And much of that Good War -- which gathered momentum with rapidity and force -- occurred initially in the blood-dimmed lands down behind the Cotton Curtain. And as it flamed, it threw its sparks into the North, East and West -- to all oppressed. Let me tell you. Springtime -- that's what I always think of -- when I recall the year 1961 when I enlisted in the Southern Movement 'way down in Mississippi for what became six full years in the Dixie freedom campaign. And, believe me, at that early point there were clouds, ominous clouds -- and hostile winds and very strong ones. But there was Sun and there was great courage. And all over the Southland, there were a great many dissident things growing. Some came sooner, some later; but for a good long while there were struggles of all sizes and each of them truly great -- everywhere. And the emergent Movement rose in shining form in those years -- especially during the early and mid-'60s -- and out of all those local streams of struggle came a Great River buoyed by faith and optimism in the New World A'Coming. And it fought its now legendary battles through economic reprisals, police and vigilante brutality, bloody swamps, murder and betrayals. And much indeed of that which had sent me into the Movement -- a young Native person with a radical labor background from the racist Southwest -- was essentially swept away by the Southern Movement as those turbulent years passed: the sinister forces which had given me boyhood memories of Blacks and Indians and Chicanos murdered with immunity by open racists or via "color of law," restaurant signs that warned us that "No Indians or Dogs Allowed," and countless other cutting things that served as a toughening crucible-for-struggle for myself -- and for many, many others. And as those burning Southern sparks went up and far beyond into the North and the East and the West -- they helped fuel older movements: Native, Chicano, Oriental, women -- and peace. And they helped ignite newer rights struggles -- urban ghettoes, gays, students, prisoners, handicapped, senior citizens, mentally challenged, anti-death penalty. For a time, there was a genuine national Movement. And there were indeed many very positive changes which emerged nationally: breaking the hard-lines of resistance to social change; a slowly growing awareness -- especially among the young -- of the common humanity of all peoples and cultures; the achievement in heretofore "closed" quarters of the very right to organize and dissent and demonstrate; and the development of widespread local leadership; the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 and others; the beginnings of desegregation and integration in the lands of Old Apartheid. And there was a strengthening of Native treaty rights and tribal land/resource ownership and a broadening recognition of the functional reality of Indian tribal national sovereignty and the need for bona fide Native self-determination. And there was the rise of militant and effective unionism in that most-difficult-to-organize world: that of the farm workers in the always oppressive "factories in the fields." Increasingly widespread minority political participation and activism flourished; there was an end to most racial terrorism; and a basis for interracial and democratic unionism -- for those unions willing to display courage and commitment in the thrust to "organize the unorganized." And there was even more. For awhile. And many indeed began to talk determinedly and optimistically of bona fide economic justice -- that full measure of bread and butter for all. But the really radical visionary promise of the initial Movement of the latter 1950s and the 1960s and into the '70s -- looking for the end of racism and ethnocentrism and the achievement of full economic justice -- did not, of course, materialize. The social class dichotomies of the Southern Movement especially, joined by the even broader integrationist/separatist debates -- all of this in the context of the initially positive victories, much tokenism, and continuing economic deprivation and poverty -- combined to fragment much of the solidarity which had once characterized the Great Struggle in its Springtime. Behind the scenes, there were the never-ending manipulative maneuvers of capitalism -- and those of stratospheric corporate liberalism and its more localized appendages; the seemingly endless and increasingly hideous War on the other side of the world; the Machiavellian usage of the Economic Opportunity Act -- generally sprinkling just enough for the poor to fight over and never enough to even wound the monster of poverty. And then there was the FBI and its COINTELPRO poisoning and hatchet-jobbing. All of these had an extraordinarily destructive impact on a myriad of national fronts. And what they didn't kill, they often substantially slowed -- frequently to the point of glacial pace. And when the Movement fires died down and the pieces broke away, and the smoke began to clear, there were -- still -- some burning coals of continued social justice activism. Some were older, some newer. For there are always those who, whatever the national mood and ethos and however seemingly high the cliffs of adversity, continue to "keep on, keeping on." These are the long distance runners in the Save the World Business. But now it can often be lonely. Minority people may not be frequently shot down these days with immunity -- though it can still happen under color of law -- and there may no longer be the "No Indians" signs on the Southwestern restaurant doors and the ugly Woolworth lunch counter episodes awaiting those non-White. Minorities moving into previously all-White neighborhoods in the Yankee lands are generally no longer burned out. But poke the turf anywhere in the United States and there's still plenty of racism and ethnocentrism right under the grass -- just like stratified rock. And the general economic situation is increasingly bad -- going right down Skid Road into the waters of heavy recession, and maybe even depression. In this grim geography of mounting crisis, there is massively disproportionate minority sub-employment and unemployment. The never-reality of health, education and welfare for all of those "of the fewest alternatives" -- minorities and otherwise -- is now frequently a very cruel joke. Assaults on minority cultural programs and non-English languages are now common. Federal and state and vigilante attacks on immigrants -- especially those of darker skin -- have become legion. And, for many of Islamic background, and emanating directly from the sacristy of the Federal colossus itself, there is the cruelest harassment and incarceration treatment since at least the massive Japanese-American imprisonment [and collateral land-theft by Anglos] of sixty years ago. Anyone who is at all naive about the extraordinary survival and resurgence abilities of racism and cultural ethnocentrism and all of the other related anti-people isms is either myopic or a damn fool. The proverbial rattlesnake who, shot innumerable times, still twists and spits "until the sun goes down" is an easy adversary -- compared to the Varieties of Human Hate. And now, these days, hate groups are certainly moving very actively about in the United States -- and some are steadily growing.. High nationalism, domestic and international paranoia, "Wars" against dark-skinned peoples, and the significantly deepening economic difficulties are among the basic factors stimulating such virulent hate organizations as the National Alliance, the Nationalist Movement, Identity Church, Aryan Nations, the Order, contemporary Klans, racist skinheads et al. And all of these, grounded on a completely irrational myriad of murky and mercurial forces, defy easy and conventional sociological blackboard analysis. The pathology of these outfits is certainly complex -- but there are always certain specific consistencies: they are racist, poisonously ethnocentric, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, usually homophobic and frequently carry all sorts of other anti-people "isms" as well. And they are very often violent -- increasingly so. The old Southern Klans developed and functioned [and the few survivors still do] in the context of the traditionally closed South and its open, widespread poverty -- with the poor Whites being cunningly and consistently manipulated in anti-union and racist schemes by the economic Big Mules, the "Captains." The primary basis for the old Klans was/is economic. These far more complex and increasingly sophisticated contemporary hate organizations [again, National Alliance et al.] reflect in virulent fashion, via their own sick and twisted perspective -- the great maelstrom of forces in which modern Humanity is enmeshed. But, when you cut down -- through it all -- right to their ultra-venomous bone, you find, again and always, the very basic components: racism, ethnocentrism, anti-Semitism and all the other anti-people isms. And you find violence. And you also find, as the ultimate foundational component, very substantial economic concerns, fear, and massive insecurities. While all of these pose substantial threats and dangers, the one category now most open to racist/violent recruitment -- and this has been true for at least the past generation -- are economically precarious, disaffected and alienated White youth: racist skinhead material. And, of course, it isn't just active and potential hate-groupers who warrant concern. It's a great many average American Anglos -- fundamentally decent people in many ways, but with serious hang-ups about folks who they perceive as "different." And, let me note, it isn't easy to be, say, one of the always few Native Americans or often the only one -- or other minority faculty -- in the ostensibly genteel and usually wicked Groves of Academe where virtually everyone piously denies in proper prose being racist or ethnocentric. Approaches? Well, as always: Keep on organizing, keep on fighting. That's Genesis. Organizing -- genuinely effective people-oriented organizing -- is always hard, tough work. It means getting and keeping people together for action. It's tedious and frequently mundane. Sometimes it's dangerous. But it's absolutely critical. And every movement -- Native rights, radical, labor, civil rights, and all others reaching to the Sun -- is built on the wreckage and the remains and the hard lessons of its predecessors. Some specific things? Widespread exposure of issues and multi-faceted education -- certainly. Arrest and prosecution for hate crimes -- for sure. Hard-fighting human rights action -- always. But very basically, racially and ethnically integrated grassroots socio-economic justice and advocacy organizations, wide-spread public works programs and other related approaches [e.g., the old voluntary Civilian Conservation Corps], the push for full employment with living wage and much more, and full health care and a decent education, and militant and democratic and pervasive unionization. And, most fundamentally of all, a democratic and egalitarian society organized to ensure that a full measure of bread and butter and a full measure of respect and liberty are accorded every human -- everywhere. And now, putting on my Indian blanket and viewing the whole panorama from the perspective of a Native who is also a perennial outdoor mountain and mesa climber: When all is said and done, and one sits on the edge of a 'way up ridge or high mesa and looks out at the geographical contours of the Earth, you can see that most of these blend smoothly and logically together. And so it is with the contours of humankind and all its varied ways of life. These, seen from a high vantage point, flow for the most part into and with one another. The dichotomy of working class / employing class is -- no matter how diverse the various peoples involved -- the great basic river-thrust. Of the ultimate outcome, genuine socialist democracy for all of the many colors and cultures, I certainly have no doubt. Human commonality demands Justice -- and will get it. And I know that Spring will come again. Hunter Gray [Hunterbear] Micmac / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk www.hunterbear.org Protected by NaŽshdoŽiŽbaŽiŽ and Ohkwari' In our Gray Hole, the ghosts often dance in the junipers and sage, on the game trails, in the tributary canyons with the thick red maples, and on the high windy ridges -- and they dance from within the very essence of our own inner being. They do this especially when the bright night moon shines down on the clean white snow that covers the valley and its surroundings. Then it is as bright as day -- but in an always soft and mysterious and remembering way. 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