Black Socialists in AmericaVerified account

When egoists throw out terms like “check your privilege,” they seem more concerned with placing white Americans in a lose-lose situation instead of highlighting a ceding of power to the ruling class based upon manufactured social structures, and creating a pathway for solidarity.

Explanations for white supremacy that only rely on “biology” or attribute it to benefits gained by all “white” Americans are fundamentally incomplete, for they analyze “race” within a vacuum; there is always a socioeconomic component that must be addressed in this conversation.

W.E.B. DuBois said in “Black Reconstruction”: (1) "Race was supplemented by a carefully planned and slowly evolved method, which drove such a wedge between the white and black workers..."

(2) “There prob­a­bly are not today in the world two groups of work­ers with practically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything of common interest.”

Phrases like “check your privilege” are commonly used today, but NOT to speak to the reality that poor and working class white Americans are ceding power to Capitalist exploiters who couldn’t care less about them (or us). We must address the ILLUSION of “race” FIRST.

We agree with Allen; the “white race” must be understood, not simply as a social construct (as opposed to a genetic phenomenon), but as a “ruling class social control formation.” “RACE” and “WHITE PRIVILEGE” are “RULING CLASS SOCIAL CONTROL FORMATIONS” (divide and conquer).

Noel Ignatiev, author of “How the Irish Became White,” has a great quote that we’ll end this thread with: (1) “The ending of white supremacy is not solely a demand of the Negro people, separate from the class demands of the entire working class.”

(2) “It cannot be left to the Negro people to fight it alone, while the white workers 'sympathize with their fight,' 'support it,' 'reject racist slanders' etc. but actually fight for their 'own' demands."

(3) “The ideology of white chauvinism is bourgeois poison aimed primarily at the white workers, utilized as a weapon by the ruling class to subjugate black and white workers."

(4) "It has its material base in the practice of white supremacy, which is a crime not merely against non-whites but against the entire proletariat. Therefore, its elimination certainly qualifies as one of the class demands of the entire working class."

(5) "In fact, considering the role that this vile practice has historically played in holding back the struggle of the American working class, the fight against white supremacy becomes the central immediate task of the entire working class."

When we say we’re fighting against “white supremacy,” we’re talking about fighting against an IDEA and STRUCTURE; an idea and structure that has left poor and working class Blacks and whites in conflict for centuries instead of rising up against their Capitalist oppressors.

Black Americans and “white” (European) Americans are not monoliths; we are prepared to move through all divisions to bring all poor and working class peoples within America to a multiethnic plane of direct action that sheds the Capitalist system from human existence. Solidarity!

Quick Correction: In the fifth tweet, it should say “‘English’” instead of “‘British’” (worth clarifying). “British” or “Brittish” was actually more commonly used in reference to Irish people during this time, and went on to have meaning as a colonial identity decades later.