There are some in the progressive camp who hold to the belief that Gov. Bill Clinton's attack on the rapper Sister Souljah at a Rainbow Coalition meeting, however detrimental to the interests of solidarity between Black and white workers, should nevertheless be treated as a tempest in a teapot. It should be set aside or put in the file-and-forget department, at least until the election is over. There are both Black and white adherents of this view.The basis for it is the fear that a sharp divergence between the Jesse Jackson forces and Clinton will lead ultimately to another victory for the Reagan-Bush, anti-labor, anti-civil rights forces; that it will perpetuate what has been happening for so long that has left millions unemployed, huge factories dismantled, with millions of jobs going abroad. U.S. workers in general and oppressed people in particular are in their worst position in several decades.
Such is the view expressed by a prominent Black trade unionist, Stanley Hill, head of the biggest municipal workers' union in the country--District Council 37 of AFSCME in New York, immediately following the Rainbow Coalition meeting where Clinton leveled his attack on Sister Souljah and where Jesse Jackson felt obligated to immediately retort in no uncertain terms. Should this then have ended the matter?
Clinton accused Sister Souljah of being no better than David Duke because she had said, "If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" Just to add a little more significance to this, the Supreme Court in a five-to-four decision a few days later said it was perfectly okay for a member of the Ku Klux Klan to burn a cross on the property of a Black family.
So there you have it. Sister Souljah cast in the role of a reverse racist, not unlike Duke, and the Supreme Court lending support to that in the name of free speech.
Should workers and oppressed people in the progressive movement view this with equanimity, cast it aside as though it were one of the many incidents that would divert attention from the main objective of the labor movement, even more so the civil rights movement and the progressive camp of the millions who are opposed to the anti-working class, pro-war, pro-racist politics of the Bush administration?
Equality: the principle
There is a broader issue in Clinton's vicious attack on Sister Souljah than is evident, if one takes a few moments to think it through. Clinton's methodology in approaching this question rests on the assumption that David Duke and Sister Souljah are, as individuals, equals in a system where formal equality is enshrined in the Constitution and in basic legislation of the U.S. Congress. All of this was formulated as long ago as the Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men--now supposedly women also--are equal.
As a statement of high principle, it is laudable, commendable and eminently revolutionary. When it was first proposed during the revolutionary Enlightenment period in France, nothing so much aroused the enthusiasm of the masses as the slogan "Liberty, Fraternity and Equality," especially the part about equality. The writer of the Declaration of Independence and the architects of the Constitution began a flood of unending, florid oratory in praise of these conceptions which grow more numerous today, especially with each national election.
Equality--what a brave, truly wonderful conception, not just for the U.S. government but for all humanity. All equal under law and under God--what more can one expect from a government?
But let us lift the curtain ever so slightly and look at the grim reality. To begin with, that which is most patently obvious.
Equality: the reality
There are 100 senators in the U.S. Congress. Ninety-eight are white. Not one is Black. How did that happen? Is there any chance that this could be fundamentally changed if the same process is followed for at least half a century, given the six-year term? Most get re-elected at least once, and some two and three times.
Or look at the lower, more popular arm of the government, 535 representatives. If you add together the Black, Latino, women, Asian and even some white progressives, what does it come to? Not more than 50. Add some more not quite as progressive and maybe there'll be 60 or 75. If you watch the State of the Union address on television, you will see how the Black, Latino, even some of the progressive whites are all drowned out in a sea of white reaction.
Then look at the composition of the Supreme Court, appointed for life. And the rest of the federal judiciary. In the light of the real, living situation of the American masses, the platitudes of equality and what they dub as race relations are a fraud.
Putting an equal sign between David Duke and Sister Souljah's outrage against the persecution, exploitation and oppression of Black people, which is what her remark meant, is sheer fraud. She was expressing outrage against 300 years of slavery, robbery, pillage, plunder, and the semi-servitude since the Civil War in spite of the efforts of the revolutionary period of Reconstruction.
There have been more than 200 rebellions of Black people since the days of Nat Turner. When artists, writers, and rappers attempt to give this a cultural expression, should it be condemned as racism?
From Los Angeles to South Africa
Let us look around the world. Is it racism for the Black people in South Africa to express their rage against the brutal suppression visited upon them just the other day by the de Klerk government? Are there not many thousands who are saying the same thing as Sister Souljah? How different was the massacre in the Black township of Boipatong than the suppression of the rebellion in Los Angeles?
Our capitalist media know how to give splendid coverage to atrocities, when it suits their purposes. For instance, in the early 1930s when the Indian movement for independence from British imperialism was beginning to take on a mass character, the U.S. capitalist press, at least its liberal wing, gave significant publicity to the atrocities of the British colonialist government in India. That's how people here learned about what was going on in that part of the world.
But the U.S. was committing similar atrocities in Puerto Rico--the Ponce Massacre--and against the Philippine struggle for independence. The press didn't fulminate against that.
Look at the skimpy coverage of outright lynchings of Black people in the U.S., which had been going on all this time. It should be sufficient to mention the anti-lynching bill, which stalled for so many years in Congress.
It was the awakening of the Black and labor movements that opened up the struggle and brought about the civil rights legislation, which to this day is the product of the revolutionary intervention of the masses and their liberating struggles. The great strike waves, later the anti-war struggles, all culminated in the mass uprisings of the 1960s.
To accept the corroded theory of reverse racism, which Clinton proposed at the Rainbow Coalition conference, rather than vigorously refute it, is a threadbare defense of racism. It would be sheer folly for the movement.
To file Clinton's vicious attack, to dispose of it as some minor flurry in the midst of bigger things, grander objectives, such as the defeat of the racist, anti-labor offensive that has been going on for so many years, is sheer folly. Even worse is to forget, in the name of victory for the Democratic Party candidate, that both houses of Congress have been solidly Democratic all this time, beginning with day one of the Reagan administration. No appropriations for militarism, no giant tax breaks and giveaways for the rich could take place without the consent of both houses, solidly controlled by Democrats.
Are we to close our eyes to this?
Jackson and Ross Perot
All that took place at the Rainbow Coalition conference would not look so bad, at least not give the appearance of merely becoming a platform for bourgeois politicians, if it were not for one aspect of the sordid developments, for which Jackson himself is responsible. He is reported to have said regarding Ross Perot (New York Times, June 19): "There's a lot we don't know about him."
Oh really? What is there we really have to know? He's a billionaire who became one on the basis of exploitation and oppression of workers. Did he make the billions with his own hands and brain, or was it the workers--Black, white, Latino, women, gay and straight? To be more specific, lots of the money his company has gotten is the result of government contracts. Hundreds of millions of dollars worth. You just can't get those contracts if you are a small, struggling business person unless you are an insider in the capitalist government, unless you're a participant in the robbery of the Treasury.
The capitalist press has not gotten around to highlighting this. But they will if they decide to go after him.
"When he questions going too fast on free trade with Mexico, when he talks about equal funding for all schools and public education and freedom of choice for women on abortion, we need to listen," said Jackson. But that's not what the Rainbow Coalition was led to believe about Perot. They had expected Perot himself to come. According to the Times, "Mr. Jackson seemed especially pleased that Mr. Perot had expressed interest after discussing with Felix G. Rohatyn, the New York financier, a trillion-dollar plan to rebuild American industry that he and Mr. Jackson had been working on." This is what fired the imagination of many of the participants, who were led to believe that there was some substance to this plan.
The very idea that Rohatyn and Perot would get themselves involved in a trillion-dollar development plan is enough to set off the wildest of rumors. It would have been something for Perot himself to come to the Rainbow Coalition. But this was a fantasy. And even more fantastic is the idea that Rohatyn has become a knight in shining armor ready to do battle on behalf of Black businesses. He had his chance when the Freedom Bank of Harlem needed a helping hand to save it from bankruptcy. Rohatyn was nowhere in sight. And Perot floating this rumor about his interest in a trillion-dollar development plan is a ploy. It should have been recognized as such.
But by Jackson saying, We should listen to him, he lent grist to his mill.
For the militants and progressives, for the millions of workers and oppressed masses throughout the country, a way has to be found out of this morass and into a clear-cut, working-class, totally anti-racist, anti-militarist, pro- woman, pro-gay struggle. Rather than to consider the hopeless fraud of a Rohatyn-Perot scheme, which is thoroughly fraudulent, why not consider the possibility of launching a struggle for a Peoples Assembly, away from the discredited, two-party capitalist system, or the third party of Perot?
This would be a real, lasting contribution to the cause of the oppressed people, the working class and the progressive movement in general.