Re: ethnic divisions

[Waistline2]

In a message dated 7/29/2004 2:02:24 PM Central Standard Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:   >Are the ethnic hostilities something that would naturally die out without being enflamed intentionally for political gains or are they inevitable?   The Irish were regarded almost identically to the Blacks in the US.  I gave some sources on this a few days ago, I believe.  Yet, there is not a high level of anti-Irish feeling in the US.   If my suspicion is correct, are there any models for people confronting those who try to whip up divisions?<   Comment   We defeat the ideological advocates of ethnic hostility by winning turf in the social arena. We win at the dinner table and the electoral arena on the basis of the power of one . . . our individual bad ass self. And this works . . . really.   As a general rule  . . . I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure to NEVER discuss  . . . other than in the most general sense  . . . any question that deals with oppressed people any where on earth except in America.   Then again . . . I have a fundamental distrust of any American Marxists who claims to have an analysis of the national factor anywhere on earth except the American Union.   Anything we say about the national factor any where else on earth is going to automatically provoke the most intense disdain and contempt because we are the most imperial of all imperial peoples.   Good intentions mean nothing.   If you are standing at the dice table . . . rolling the dice and winning . . . with your doll on your arms looking like a million bucks . . . this is not the right time to lecture the guy who cannot get into the game. If you have any compassion in your heart you have to throw him a couple chips . . . which is proof of your imperial status . . . or set the house up (the drinks on me) . . . or be real cool and leave people alone.   Ethnic tension that passes over into antagonism do so in an economic context and this is not meant in the sense of economic determinism . . . but the intractability of a historically evolved social position the oppressed occupy in relationship to the oppressing people.   Some time ago I read about . . . in New York . . . the wages structure placed on the Irish worker and it was lower than that of the African American about a hundred years ago. A hundred years is not a very long time . . . really.   The Slavic workers were "lower" than say the English immigrant. What is called the melting pot in America . . . from the lens of the social and economic position of the African American as a people . . . has meant a process of assimilation that produced what is called Anglo-American and not simply "white."   The designation "white." . . . drives me up the wall . . . and is in itself a construct of the bourgeois ideological sphere that robs us of an understanding of the continuous formation and reconfiguration of a historically evolved people unique to America.   What happens to the Irish in America . . . after a generation or two . . . is the assimilation of that which is specific to the evolving story called American history. This process of assimilation also happens to . . . not just to . . . so-called white people but blacks . . . African Americans.   One can be rewarded by tracing the historic immigration pattern . . . since say 1700 . . . and can chart the formation of the Anglo American people on the basis of successive waves of European immigrants.   One can also trace the evolution of the African American people as a people and will discover that they evolved as a people ... Especially after roughly 1850 . . . not based on successive waves of immigration . . . but on an internal dynamic of growth that places them at the center of American history.    It's DEEP.   The point is that we are dealing with a national factor peculiar to our own history and nothing in the writings of Marx . . . Lenin . . . Stalin or even Trotsky (whose insights on the "Negro Question" was always more keen than his followers) is going to allow us to understand our own history.   The historic antagonism between the Anglo American people and the African American . . . which has materially lessened since the shattering of the barrier of segregation . . . is fundamentally economic. This is a bourgeois property relations.   Whose kids get to go to college . . . who becomes foreman . . . who is promoted on the job . . . what kind of house you can buy . . . what kind of neighborhood one lives in . . . whether or not one is stopped by the police and threatened with incarceration.   It is not my intent to present an economic determinists picture of American society . . . but the last large "race riot" in Detroit - attacks of whites against blacks . . . was over housing and who could have access to government sponsored housing. There was no spontaneous ethnic conflict . . . but an attempt to enforce segregation and economic privilege.     Left on our own so to speak . . . or in the absence of a historically evolved social position and enforcing an intractable social position . . . by the government . . .  Anglo American as a people and African Americans as a people have imitated and mimicked each other to a degree that at time one cannot distinguish one from the other. Really . . . it is a love hate relationship rooted in history and 99% of the hate is economic status.   Its tricky . . . the Anglo American people as a people are not an ethnic group but a historically evolved people. Language itself stands in our way . . . and all of us know that Anglo Americans are not some freaking ethic group but a people. This people "category" is increasingly blurred and defies the conventional wisdom on the national factor because real life merges and disperses people.   One can come to grips with the logic of imperial without exceeding the boundary where our individuality ends and another's individuality begins. We already know that history is written on a parchment of genocide in blood ink. WE KNOW THIS.   We also must come to grips with the raw fact that imperial as the logic of human history and economic development means the export of a higher mode of production and its imposition on an economically and socially less developed people. "Economically and socially less developed" is not a statement on gray matter or moral fiber . . . or the peculiarity of ones culture . . . but the curve of history none of us create as individuals . . . but all of us create as people.   The reason we have to be careful is not because we might step on someone's feet . . .  rather we were born standing on their feet.   The national factor always provoke the most intense discussion and unsubscribes on every list because we have not mastered stating the obvious first. Outside the multinational state of the USNA I am not a nigga but an imperial American . . . and in the deep South a freaking Yankee . . . and I am very careful of this.   And when the brothers ask me about my infatuation with Marilynn Monroe and 7 of 9 . . . (her old man lost his political position trying to offer her up for pleasure to any buffoon when he could have sent her to my address) . . .  I break out the old movies and as this "what you talking about man?"   "Ethnic conflict" . . . cannot be solved by some magically socialism and every nigga in America know this. The resolution is of course a higher morality and ethics and also dismantling the institutional framework of the imperial logic of history. This is a big job . . . but somebody got to do it.   And it will not happen in a year or a decade . . . even under the most favorable conditions.   Yes, . . . I have nothing but contempt for the Marxists that violate the boundary and make our task harder because they have "figured out the solution" to the national factor.   This "thing" called Chechnya is playing with fire. Watch every one of these great advocates of national peculiarity fall to the vortex of economic center of gravity.   I got an instinct about the national factor and folks running off at the mouth . . . who ainât been elected to shit in their life.   I apologize for no one . . . Stalin or the mutherfuckers that lynched me and mine . . . and right now today are holding 40 million people in place at the bottom of the social ladder.   Allow me to tell you what happened that will cause you to lose sleep . . . because of our . . .  yours and mine . . . fundamental decency.   The mutherfuckers string you up and insert a fiery hot iron into your chest and you scream . . . "Oh God" . . . and then the bastrads cut off your penis and finger and put them into jars of water and alcohol to preserve the memory.   My beef is that Lou P said this is Stalin's fucking fault.   I'm like . . . are you stupid.   Then . . . I feel that we need to stay on economics because the "E" in Pen-L means economics.   I do not want to give the wrong impression because as moderator Lou P. has been very generous with me. He violates everything I have lived for and has not a clue about his Yankee arrogance.   His fight for market shares will be his undoing. Wait until the nest several issues of the Black Scholar hit the streets.   I think its time for us to get some beers.   Where DMS at?   Melvin P.