(1) It sounds to me like you are saying follow the lead of Black Lives Matter and other black folk (especially black women?) who are leading and who are directly affected by racism. Is that correct?
(2) Making anti-racism the highest priority would require addressing the many resource-related and public amenities-related ways that systemic racism operates, correct?
(3) If that is to be carried out in terms of the various human needs that black people have such as the need for safe water, food, affordable quality housing, healthcare, prenatal care, transportation, education, safe neighborhoods (including being safe from police violence)…etc, how are these systemic changes to be carried out, if not thru multiracial coalitions?
(4) Can you reasonably expect a critical mass of multiracial support for policies that prioritize anti-racism over anti-classism?
(5) Do you assume that any critique on the primacy of anti-racism over anti-classism is necessarily racist or an attempt to cater to racists?
(6) Is there some way to dismantle systemic racism other than thru building popular support whereby a critical mass of people exert pressure on our government, combined maybe with consumer-driven and worker-driven pressure on corporations?
(7) Amid economic crises that are affecting low-income, working and middle class people of all colors and ‘races’, how are the race-specific policies going to gain mass support? I am asking in terms of seeking your causal, social science assessment of our current society, not in terms of how things should be, according to one’s ideals.
(8) What have you inquired into, regarding reparations? William Darity, who advocates for them, estimates a 4 to 6 trillion dollar price. How do relate that to other progressive policy ideas such as a Green New Deal?
Darity says Oprah would be eligible for a reparations payment and that reparations “are not an anti-poverty program.”
How are people to organize around reparations amid the plutocratic assault on the working classes of all races?
I’m asking you what you think is doable in your assessment of the current state of society not asking what should happen according to a wide historical ledger of injustices over the past 400 years. There is a segment of people on the left who think in terms of the latter but likely the vast majority of people in the world don’t, especially not in our day to day affairs.
(9) Has it occurred to you that the ruling class has been ok with limited, targeted, race-specific programs because such policies help prevent challenges to their power?
(10) Yes, it’s true that in countless pivotal cases, white immigrants and white workers (as well as brown workers) have turned their back on solidarity with black people, who’ve been the most exploited, (along with Native Americans). But does that therefore mean that giving primacy of anti-racism over anti-classism is the best way forward for addressing current social and ecological crises?
(11) Has it occurred to you that you are confusing what I’m saying with some sort of support for, as you say, “racistly tinged socialism” when what I am actually saying is that this year’s protests regarding police and vigilante murders of black people were framed in ways that do not actually address systemic racism, but instead focus on policing, using provocative but hollow ideas such as “defunding the police” which, by the way, is actually not happening?
I myself see that critique as consistent with MLK’s critique of white liberals and white moderates in his time. Then as now, masses of people are outraged by blatantly racist brutality but are not concerned about systemic racial inequality.
It’s march and chant and have a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker as a sort of brand, but quite another matter to help dismantle systemic racism. The latter requires coalitions to address resource-related and public-amenities-related exclusion and exploitation. That in turn requires, I maintain, a class based multiracial movement. In other words anti-racism and anti-classism are inextricable.
(12) To what extent have you considered that what I’m actually saying is that if systemic racism is to be addressed in its many economic and resource-related aspects, there are two main prongs: (a) race-specific organizing led by black people and supported by non-black allies, and not requiring mass multiracial support and (b) corporate-scale and governmental policies that do require mass public multiracial support ?
(13 ) Have you considered that (b) above likely involves deep changes to global capitalism as we currently know it?
If white allies, which I’d like to think includes me, want to support race-specific policies for restorative and distributive justice, especially those that black people lead, I’d expect you to assume I’m for that.
However, I ask how far that approach can go before it is no longer effective in addressing the plutocratic assault on political, economic, and cultural freedom and the habitability of earth.
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