Re: But it looks like the immigrant lovers are winnning and they are going to turn America into this massive, swarming mishmosh of humanity. Viva la race riot!
-John
Liberalism and the Left: Rethinking the Relationship
Comment
Gerald Horne
Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eric Foner, Amber Hollibaugh, and Manning Marable have presented us with challenging perspectives on the often star-crossed relationship between "liberalism" and the "left." In the few pages allotted to me, I would like to highlight some of the more intriguing points presented by these leading intellectuals.
Foner points out quite correctly that it has been possible for liberals to accept both race and gender inequality. This is all too true, and unraveling the reason why forces us to ruthlessly reexamine some of the holiest of shibboleths.
Fortunately, recent scholarship has been quite helpful in that regard. Too often, a dialogue about "race" in this nation has meant an examination of "blackness." But it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the burgeoning scholarship on "whiteness"--a body of work that, if taken seriously, could also aid in the unpacking of "white supremacy;" for race privilege particularly has been a major stumbling block in forging viable relations between liberals and the left. It was left to those on the left--particularly communists--to challenge the comfortable consensus on racism and sexism. The challenge to this consensus helps to explain why Blanche Wiesen Cook can refer graphically and all too accurately to how "liberalism lynched the left."
How was it that once warring English and Irish, French and Germans, Russians and Poles, Serbs and Croats--even Jews and Gentiles--were somehow reconstructed as "white" upon arrival on these shores? This is the question that has engaged a new generation of scholars. Their answers vary, but it is evident that the "construction of whiteness" was heavily dependent on the degradation and subordination of "non-whites." The U.S. pioneered this process from the time of its formation in the late eighteenth century. And of course the U.S.--as Eric Foner suggests--was also a regional headquarters of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment itself did not contemplate the inclusion of Africans, to cite one example among many, and was, in many ways, an initial building block in the construction of "whiteness."
Thus, the confluence of "whiteness"--or "white supremacy" for that matter--and the Enlightenment was no "contradiction." The 1776 Revolution in former British North America represented a conscious uprising against the divine right of monarchs, and its substitution by the divine right of--especially--propertied "white" men. The idea that the liberalism embodied in the Enlightenment was fatally flawed by its capitulation to, if not exaltation of, racism has been validated by recent scholarship.
Since that time there have been concerted efforts in this nation to extend the limits of the Enlightenment. The socialist project was one of the most sustained and, for a while, the most successful. As a number of scholars have pointed out lately, pressure from the international community--particularly the socialist component of this community-- forced the U.S. to retreat from Jim Crow. How could Washington purport to be the paragon of human rights virtue when people of color in this nation were treated so horribly?
That is not all. The exclusion of African Americans particularly from full-scale citizenship forced many of them to make alliances with the real and imagined foes of U.S. elites. This list began with Native American nations and included Britain, Haiti, Mexico, the Soviet Union, and Japan.
Like the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Meiji Restoration in Japan in 1868, which accelerated the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism, was a turning point in the devolution of "white supremacy." Not only did the existence of a "modern non-European" state put paid to the notion that such formations could only be constructed by "whites," Japan--like many nations previously--quickly recognized that those nations' enduring difficulties with the U.S. could always find solace and solidarity with African Americans suffering second-class citizenship. Thus, imperial Japan was instrumental in boosting the Nation of Islam in the 1930s, as they united on a common platform against white supremacy if not "whiteness" itself. Japan's influence was so pervasive within the Nation of Islam that even today remnants of those now-forgotten days are reflected in the invocation by some nationalist rappers of the concept of the "Asiatic Black Man."
Though the point is often missed, national security concerns loomed large when Washington made the fateful decision to retreat from the most egregious aspects of Jim Crow. It was evident that if justice were not forthcoming, the "subaltern" in the U.S. could pursue international options, including aligning with the real and imagined foes of U.S. elites; this could fatally compromise the nation's security. This remains true.
It is also striking that significant pressure on the U.S. to erode white supremacy came from non-blacks on the left, e.g. the world-wide communist movement, and from the far right (i.e. imperial Japan, whose anger against white supremacy burst forth during World War II). In fact, it has been the historic practice of "liberals" in Japan to accede to the dictates of European racism in Africa and elsewhere; these policies have been resisted by the communists and the ultra-right, albeit for different reasons. Opposition to Jim Crow did not come from other so-called "liberal democracies" such as Britain, France, Holland, etc., all of whom forcibly implanted white supremacy in their colonies in Africa and Asia.
Thus, in the broad sweep of history, the association of liberals with progressive reform, on race particularly, can be seen as an anomaly. It was motivated largely by the "emergencies" presented by the Pacific War, then the Cold War, and with the conclusion of the latter, liberalism has reverted to its role as an essential component of "whiteness."
Those who are vexed by what they call "identity politics" have managed to ignore that the original identity politics was the "construction of whiteness" and its close handmaiden, white supremacy. This helps to explicate why the politics of "blackness" seems to be the major target of the self-proclaimed opponents of identity politics. For the African-American struggle has been a struggle against racial privilege and, to that extent, could be interpreted as a struggle against the "whiteness" dispensation provided by the Enlightenment. Further, this struggle against this nation's founding concept has often and ineluctably been in objective alliance with the alleged enemies of the U.S.--a nation that rescued so many of Europe's "subalterns" from persecution and that was able to do so precisely because Washington was able to curb hostility among "whites." Would the successful struggle against racial privilege lead to a revival of the ethnic tension that led so many to flee Europe in the first place? Would not the class struggle trumpeted so loudly by the left erode racial privilege, destabilize "whiteness" and, therefore, have the potential for reviving the ethnic tensions that forced so many subaltems to flee Europe in the first place? Would the left be so naive as to not recognize that African Americans in their effort to destabilize racial privilege might be forced to align with the real and imagined foes of the U.S. and, if so, wasn't this sufficient reason for liberalism--to use Cook's felicitous phrase--"to smash the left?" The wonder is that given this scenario more books have not been written warning about the perils of eroding racial privilege.
Blanche Wiesen Cook has suggested that "it may have been a mistake to declare holy war on the U.S.S.R...." This is quite true for reasons that contemporary "triumphalism" has hampered us from exploring. It is not just that the decline of the left globally has created a vacuum filled by the rise of an often xenophobic, wildly male supremacist nationalism. Cook properly notes that the "winning strategy" of the U.S. "depended on ethnic tensions" and now those tensions have begun to bite back." The broader point is that to subdue the Soviet Union, the U.S. made choices that not only harmed the U.S. working class --squandering tax dollars promiscuously on weapon systems instead of spending our funds judiciously on health and education--but, further, made choices that very well may destabilize U.S. imperialism itself. During the Cold War, U.S. elites acquiesced to the construction of a united Europe under German hegemony. Now with the euro, the common European currency scheduled to come on line in January 1999, there is a strong possibility that the dollar could be displaced as the international currency of choice with potentially cataclysmic consequences for U.S. interest rates--and the stability of the U.S. economy. The impact of the euro on the U.S. could be so significant that I wrote an article in the Los Angeles Times on 13 February 1997 suggesting, half-jokingly, that "whites" in the U.S. might want to start being called "Euro-Americans" so they could at once attempt to preserve, at least verbally, the property interest involved in racial privilege while moving away from racial and color designations and categories--a movement that seems to be gaining strength among this group, as evidenced by their continual imploring of blacks, make that "African Americans," to go beyond "race."
However, from the perspective of "white supremacy" the rise of Japan and China might be more calamitous than the coming of the euro. First of all, as the example of the Nation of Islam in the 1930s suggests, there have been decided and resilient "anti-white" elements among Japanese elites. The same has been true historically for Chinese elites. This may shed light on why critically acclaimed books have been published in the U.S. in recent years proclaiming the "coming war against Japan" and the "coming conflict with China." Though the euro might present a clearer danger to U.S. imperialism, there have been no critically acclaimed texts proclaiming the "coming war against Europe"--at least not yet.
At the same time, Washington finds it difficult to complain about Japan's staggering trade deficit because of its need to ally with Tokyo against Beijing and, simultaneously, finds it difficult to confront China because of the substantial U.S. investments there and for fear that such a confrontation would only drive this largest of nations closer to Tokyo. U.S. elites would like to engage in relations with Japan and China that would allow Washington to be closer to each than Tokyo and Beijing are to each other. But liberals who are still being criticized for being too "soft" on the Soviets will find it difficult to accept that anticommunism and "containment"--which they were once told was a sacred principle--is now, vis- -vis China, simply a tactic that can be discarded once the communists have opened wide their markets. Liberals, as a result, will find it difficult to accept the new line of U.S. imperialism, which will create significant troubles for them and imperialism alike. All this helps to place the U.S. in an untenable global position, and it is the direct result of the outcome of the Cold War that we are told regularly was a great "triumph."
The current international situation presents a highly complicated racial situation that has not been recognized sufficiently in the U.S. This inattention is a direct result of the weakening of the left, which historically had possessed the most sensitive antenna for matters racial. Sadly for the liberals, their tendency to beat up on African Americans does little to address these larger questions of race and ethnicity provided by the rise of the European Union, Japan, and China. All it serves to do is bring closer the day when masses of African Americans, once again, will be forced to ally with putative and actual foes of U.S. elites. The suppression of the left has made it difficult to provide the kind of "soft landing" that will be required for the triple threat of U.S. imperialism, white supremacy, and male supremacy, and convince the subalterns that a brighter day is on the way. Liberals have to be persuaded that an erosion of male privilege and especially racial privilege--and an escalation of class struggle--will not remake the ethnic tensions of Europe on these shores. In any case, the careening and onrushing train that is Germany, Japan, and China suggests that failure by U.S. liberals to change strategy and tactics--radically--may lead to the greatest losses of all. Cook, Foner, Hollibaugh, and Marable have performed an enormous public service by helping to remind us of these basic truths.
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