By Malik Miah
"We won't organise any Black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist..." Malcolm X spoke these words to the founding meeting of the Organisation of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in June 1964.
The OAAU was formed by Malcolm to be the political action organiser of the Black community to fight for full equality. After his assassination in February 1965, however, the OAAU never got off the ground. Yet its program for independent Black self-organisation and political action remains relevant for the 1990s.
While Black Americans have legal equality on paper, every economic and social statistic (income levels, health care, education, etc.) paints a picture of second-class status. The current world recession — a depression for a majority of Blacks — has exacerbated an already bleak situation.
Blacks need an independent political party to fight racism and to achieve full equality. The question is: can the major capitalist parties be reformed to represent our interests or must we join with labor and others to build a new party independent of the powers that be?
What course should Blacks follow in the 1990s?
It would be a mistake to apply 1960s analysis to the 1990s. There have been many important changes since then, most importantly the end of laws supporting legal segregation. These are significant changes that make it easier for the Black community to forge alliances with others and thus it is in a stronger position to fight for full political and economic equality. The potential for Black and white unity in action is at its greatest point since the end of slavery in the mid 1800s. A majority of whites are opposed to racist laws. This was not true before the rise of the civil rights movement.
Under the free enterprise system, however, inequality is a given. The employers seek to rule working people by dividing us in as many
ways as they can. For example, they use ethnic and sexual divisions. The fight of working people is to improve our situation against the wealthy owners of business until we are strong enough politically to establish our own government controlled by workers and the oppressed.
For Blacks to win full equality will require a revolution against the capitalist system. The road to that revolution, however, will be travelled by fighting to win reforms such as affirmative action, the right to vote, and full political representation. We fight for reforms not as an end but as a step toward winning complete control of the government and society.
Where are we at today in this battle? Much further than we were in false to simply look at average statistics — negative or positive ones. While the number of Black poor is similar to the 1960s, there have been some major social-economic changes in the United States that have led to a bigger division within the Black community between the haves and the have-nots.
At the same time, a new Black middle class based outside the urban areas exists that identifies less and less with the unemployed and underemployed workers in the largest Black communities. This Black middle class includes the mayors of major cities, police chiefs, school administrators, accountants at big firms, many other professionals. Life has significantly improved for this layer since the 1960s. While still suffering from doses of racism, this social layer in the main can "live" with it. The majority of working Blacks, however, can't.
What hasn't changed since 1964 is the truth about the two-party system. There may be more Blacks in both parties — the head of the national Democratic Party is Black — but the objectives of the two major parties remain the same: protect the big business interests of the rich against the welfare of workers, farmers and oppressed minorities particularly Black Americans. Both Clinton and Bush, for example, appeal to the backward fears of whites, not the interests of Blacks to win elections.
The issue today is not whether the Democratic and Republican parties will select Blacks to lead the armed forces, join the US Supreme Court, become mayors of cities. They have and will expand Black faces in high places. The question is: will these "gains" benefit the lives of most Blacks? After 30 years we have a clear answer: so far they haven't.
The Democratic (or Republican, for that matter) Party can't be reformed to make it a Black or labor or pro-women's rights party. It can become less racist in the sense that it doesn't promote racist candidates of David Duke's ilk. But it must continue to defend a system based on oppression and exploitation — that is, keeping racial inequality alive and well — to be an effective party for the capitalist class.
We need fundamental reforms. But they won't come by strengthening the two-party system. Nor will they occur by backing "independent" big business candidates like Ross Perot who still refers to Blacks as "you."
Return to ABCs of effective political action
We need to return to the ABCs of politics as outlined by Malcolm X — begin now to organise and build a new party and educate on why it is an urgent task for political activists, socialists and progressive- minded people to form such a party today. We must build protests and demonstrations to win reforms.
We must do what Blacks and their supporters did in the civil rights movement of the 1950s. The movement leaders didn't focus on electing "good" Democrats or Republicans, but demanded that Black civil rights be guaranteed. This meant breaking immoral laws across the rights laws only came after the rulers saw that this independent political action was getting too massive to ignore. Mass action — not electoral politics — brought change.
Fundamental change will only come through education, organisation and mass political action. Our true representatives will be the leaders of these fights. Some will eventually get elected to office as independents or members of a Black or labor party formed in battle. But they will not win reforms for us as politicians. Our own independent organisation will be decisive to bring radical change.
Not surprisingly because of the lack of real electoral choice more and more Blacks are not participating in the presidential elections. It is not disinterest. It is frustration. They want a choice. They want to vote for something that they agree with, not a lesser-evil.
Lessons of LA Rebellion
Others are taking more drastic action. The Los Angeles rebellion during the spring is the best example of how outrage over lack of jobs, racism, and a future with few prospects for a better life can ignite mass protest.
There are many lessons we can draw from the LA uprising. It was against the racist nature of a typical American police force that could brutally beat up a Black motorist, Rodney King, and claim the victim was the criminal. That anti-cop sentiment runs deep among many Blacks, Latinos and poor whites. The protests were multi-ethnic, reflecting deep class-based anger at cops.
The racist justice system was exposed widely because of the King verdict. This also led to multiracial condemnation. The jury could only see a Black thug and law-abiding cops doing their job. The complicity between cop justice and court injustice was brought home to millions.
Yet one of the more fundamental lessons of the rebellion concerns the change brought in US society since the end of Jim Crow segregation and the rise of the new Black middle class. The rebellion exposed the role of Black politicians who showed their true colors as administrators of capitalist justice against the Black community. While sensitive to the actions of racist cops (the Black mayor of New York City, David Dinkins, faced a racist cop protest against his administration in September), they nevertheless carried out their function with flying colors. Tom Bradley, the 20-year Black mayor of LA, quickly focused his fire after the rebellion began on the street violence of Black gangs — the Crips and the Bloods — and not the injustice of the cops.
Mayor Bradley and the other Black politicians were exposed as part of the problem to young Blacks, Latinos, Asians and whites. The Black middle class, who are the main social base of the leading Black politicians and benefit the most economically from the victory of the civil rights movement, were outraged by the racism of the cops and courts. But like their white middle class counterparts, they generally blamed the Black victims for "burning their own areas" and attacking
The LA rebellion was a rebellion precisely because it wasn't just poor Blacks and Latinos rioting randomly, but many whites and middle class Blacks joining in to express their conscious rejection of the status quo.
Leadership role of Black gangs
The politicisation of the gangs was and is one of the most important results of the rebellion. Mike Davis, an LA author, made this observation in an article he wrote for the Nation magazine. "When the arrest records of this latest uprising [the last one occurred in Watts in 1965 and involved thousands of working class adults and their teenage children — MM] are finally analysed", Davis wrote in the June 1 issue, "they will probably also vindicate the judgment of many residents that all segments of Black youth, gang and non-gang, 'buppie' as well as underclass, took part in the disorder".
"Yet if the riot had a broad social base", Davis continued, "it was the participation of the gangs — or, rather their cooperation — that gave it constant momentum and direction... The ecumenical movement of the Crips and Bloods is their worst imagining: gang violence no longer random but politicized into a Black intifada".
While the gang leaders have no clear political program to fight racism, they do recognise that the current leaders of the Black community are not helping to solve the economic and social crisis in their communities. They identify with the most militant pronunciations against the system and status quo. This strikes fear into the Black and white politicians of the ruling parties and government. They know that anger is very deep among Black and Latino youth.
Malcolm X is very relevant
Malcolm X's speeches and analysis become very relevant in this context of potential social explosion and rebellion. The Black Democratic and Republican Party politicians don't speak the language of the poor. Malcolm X still does.
Malcolm was assassinated 27 years ago but his ideas are alive and well. Malcolm X said Blacks must organise ourselves first to fight inequality. We must recognise that the source of this inhumane system is called capitalism. We must recognise that the two major parties are run for the rich and not for Blacks even if they let a few Blacks be their spokespeople. It is not the individual that Malcolm condemned. It is the purpose of these parties, which are used by the rich to keep Blacks in a second-class status.
Malcolm X urged Blacks to participate in effective politics: street protests, strikes, meetings, as well as supporting candidates independent of the two-party system.
The ongoing controversy about Black film director Spike Lee's new movie on the life of Malcolm X is really about politics. Racists and if Blacks know the truth about Malcolm's views it may lead to more Los Angeles rebellions. But the reality of Blacks' condition and that of the working class as a whole is why social rebellions take place. Movies don't do that.
As Malcolm X so accurately put it 28 years ago: "The only real power that is respected in this society is political and economic power. Nothing else".
[from Independent Politics]