An excellent article on the race dynamics during this election season

[Catherina]

Please be sure to read this thread Why Liberals Separate Race from Class

The article is by a Leftist Black Associate Professor at Illinois State University and very important to the dynamics being manipulated during this election in favor of protecting harmful neoliberal policies that have devastated not only America's working class, but the working class all over the world.

[brush]

1. Well researched article. Thanks for the link. nt

[Le Taz Hot]

2. I am SO glad you're back!

[MrMickeysMom]

3. K&R because you can't talk about one with addressing the other...

People who were not around to experience the "Red Scare" or other measures that were aimed to shoot down the right for equality (racial and economic) would maybe remember that this was the early cry of civil rights.

This article is an excellent review. I did not know all those names prior to MLK's specific poor people's march, and if the history is going to repeat itself about who is fighting on behalf of this inequality, this review of history puts this dynamic in order.

So many things to never forget, or read to begin with… on the way to social justice.

[Enthusiast]

4. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[beam me up scottie]

5. I see someone tried to school you on what "almost all black DUers" think.

And it was a white person, too.

[Catherina]

6. Yeah lol

The irony of that didn't escape me.

Like my man, mean William used to say,
"Skin is Thin; but Class
Will kick yo' ass."

Amiri Baraka, The drug of white supremacy

or as Keyanna Celina, one of today's brilliant young organizers on the ground puts it

"You can ride with Black all day, but what class do you ride with?"

"When you take the class struggle out of the racism issue, what you saying is "I'm ok w/ my labor being exploited and being ruled by capitalists, as long as they're Black." I'm so damn sick of know-it-alls who think it's JUST a race issue, and when you speak to the class issue and capitalism, they think u somehow giving a "white" point of view, as though capitalism had NOTHING to do w/ the slave trade and current state of America"

[sabrina 1]

7. Great quote from Celina. I wonder of all of our 'advocates' for AAs realize what they are doing when

they dismiss and/or attack those, like Bernie eg, who point out the necessity for Economic Justice for minorities?

I have no doubt that those who are behind the rhetoric know very well what they are doing, but to see supposed liberals arguing AGAINST empowering minorities by ensuring economic equality boggles the mind.

[Catherina]

11. She's an amazing young woman

I remember the 2008 election cycle all too clearly. So many people who supported, ignored, excused and condoned the racist attacks against Barack Obama are suddenly Black people's bestest allies. It was their racist attacks, along with the silence of people who knew better, that prompted me to jump in the fray in 2008 and fight that racism. Now they're our bestest friends? Like they're the bestest friends of LGBT after their awful homophobic attacks and the horrific transphobic attacks less than 2 years ago when the loudest new ally Clinton supporters were calling Transexuals "it" and formed a little club offsite to coordinate their attacks and keep their non-intersectional particular brand of 2nd wave feminism *pure*?

NO. An *ally* whose evolution depends on which way the wind blows or polls is not an ally. So I'm just ignoring these new allies and refusing to get drawn into their waste-of-time arguments. It's not like any of this is new anyway.

[sabrina 1]

12. Well said, and you are by far, not the ONLY one who is wondering where all these suddenly 'concerned

people were, eg, during the Ferguson protests, which are not that long ago, though BEFORE primary season.

I remember how difficult it was to keep that issue going here on DU. So much so that one of the best activists who was keeping us informed but not getting a whole of support, said his goodbyes to this forum and moved on to where people actually were interested in the issue surrounding the murder of AAs by cops.

There are so many amazing people who have been putting their bodies on the line from Ferguson and across the country over the year since the murder of Michael Brown, facing down the militarized police depts sent out to suppress them by Repubs and Dem elected officials, just like OWS. But you won't hear much about here I'm afraid. Or on the Corporate Media. Every day there are more arrests of peaceful protesters, but I don't come here for news of what is going on out on the streets.

Personally I find it reprehensible to try to USE such an important issue for political purposes, but then it wouldn't be the first time, decades have passed while the murder of AAs and other minorities, and poor whites have only escalated without anyone even trying to do anything about it, despite the campaign rhetoric minorities have grown so sick and tired of.

[beam me up scottie]

8. And you weren't even saying that it's just an issue of class.

I don't understand why it's so difficult for people to admit both race and economic justice are important.

We can fight for both, it's not an either/or dilemma.

I know that $15/hr won't cure sexism or domestic violence but just think how that income would empower women.

[Catherina]

9. It's difficult because if you admit economic injustice is inseparable

then you have to examine your own privilege and your own responsibility. And then if you're any sort of a human being, you're compelled to take action. It's so much easier to blame it on an "attitude" and leave it at that.

I'm fighting for both. With you and millions like us. Period.

[beam me up scottie]

10. Good point. I never thought about it like that.

It's unfathomable that we're not much closer to economic justice than we were when MLK took up the fight.

So much wealth alongside so much poverty.

[Catherina]

14. The ruling class doesn't really care about color, anymore than they care about LGBT

so as far as the ruling class was concerned, it was ok when Martin was just sticking to racism but when he got all uppity about capitalism and threatening their capital by telling poor people of all colors to rise up, that's when he had to go.

And a certain contingent in the Black community wasn't too pleased about King refusing to separate economic injustice from racial racism. It wasn't the poor contingent either, they were all geared up for the Poor People's March. Some things never change.

....

“We must admit there was a limitation of our achievement in the South,” he told a meeting of the SCLC board in 1967. SCLC would have to call for a “radical redistribution of wealth and power.” On several occasions, King told his aides that the US needed a democratic socialism that would guarantee jobs and income for all.

Other SCLC leaders, such as Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson, and Ralph Abernathy, were hostile to plans for the Poor People’s March. The SCLC’s Southern field offices had been neglected during an ill-fated attempt to organize against housing segregation in Chicago, and the group’s Northern offices were even weaker.

Moreover, the plan clashed with the black capitalist orientation of SCLC’s Operation Breadbasket, directed by Jackson. “If you are so interested in doing your own thing that you can’t do what the organization is structured to do, go ahead,” King said in response to Jackson’s criticism of the march. “If you want to carve out your own niche in society, go ahead, but for God’s sake, don’t bother me!”

Still, the Democrats saw betrayal in King’s Poor People’s Campaign — while the right wing declared it proved their longtime claim that King was a Communist. These elements, encouraged by the presidential campaign of segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace, publicly threatened King’s life.

Faced with hostility from the Johnson administration, criticism from both black nationalists and the black establishment, and a divided staff, King was politically isolated as never before when he was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968 — less than three weeks before the Poor People’s Campaign was to begin. King had travelled to Memphis to support a strike by black sanitation workers — he was the only national civil rights leader to do so.

Yet it wasn’t long after his death that the media hacks of the ruling class began to convert King into a harmless saint.

...

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/01/martin-luther-king-socialist/

from Jesse: The Life and Pilgrimage of Jesse Jackson By Marshall Frady

[sabrina 1]

13. He was so right about that. I'm trying to remember when the political system changed anything

without PEOPLE first taking action to force them to FOLLOW, first.

Gays in the Military eg. THAT should never even have been an issue especially for Dems. To deny any citizen the right to serve in a country's military for any reason is clearly UNCONSTITUTIONAL. And yet, we got DADT from a Dem administration.

And it wasn't until after ACTIVISTS took their case to the courts and eventually got a ruling on the unconstitutionality of DADT, that action was taken. And in fact, the first reaction came from the DOJ under this administration, who tried to overturn that ruling.

So MLK was correct. It is never going to happen if people depend on politicians alone. It is going to have to come from the people themselves. And it will help if we can get some politicians into elected office who don't have to 'evolve' on issues of Civil Rights who will be there fighting along with the people and ready to pass legislation or better, to propose it.

[eridani]

15. Ms Magazine published a study describing the link between a woman's income--

--(NOT family income) and domestic violence. Seems that the higher the income, the less exposure to domestic violence. Women earning more than $60K reported none. The numbers were the story, but I remember being infuriated when one of the conclusions was that women with higher incomes also had higher educational levels and therefore more communications skills!

Hey, jackasses--what about a purse full of credit cards that you can use to get the hell out of Dodge when necessary, or men OK with marrying women earning more than they do are less likely to be batterers?

[beam me up scottie]

16. No kidding.

How many of us have wished we had a way out of a bad situation?

Money = freedom to choose your partner, where you live, a reliable vehicle, an escape, the list goes on.