EROL Note: The spelling and grammer of the original is reproduced here without alteration.
I am an invisible man...I am a man of substance, of flesh, and bone, fiber and liquids…and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me...When they approach me they see only my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their imagination...indeed, everything and anything except me. Ralph Ellison
Last fall the DC issued a response to a criticism raised by Comrade S concerning the organization’s failure to take up her political consolidation around the struggle against racism. In the DC’s final responce, what was highlighted, was the organizations tendency, at all levels, to liquidate the struggle against white chauvinism as an internal problem, a reflection of our underestimation of the influence of racist ideology on our cadre and an underestimation also of the necessity of waging sharp ideological struggle against white chauvinism within our organization.
In the cell chairs meeting of November 1979 and in subsequent cell discussions a superficial understanding of the content of S’s criticism and of the DCs responce was attained, superficial, it has since become clear, because of the frequency and character the errors of racism that have subsequently been identified and spoken to within the organization. Racist ideology, in many of its classic and most vulgar forms, has a grip on the consciousness of white cadre in the PWOC, and daily these errors of white chauvinism undermining the relations between Black and white members of our organization and are erecting innumerable barriers to the development of the PWOC as a genuinely multinational organization. As a result the struggle against white chauvinism has still to gain sufficient steam, it is neither consistent nor determined enough and it is mired still in tendencies toward liberalism.
Beginning in October we saw a sharp struggle break out over the organizations broadside distributed at the Take Back the Night demonstration. The advocates of white chauvinism in the community cell and elsewhere argued, that due to the isolation of the PWOC historically FROM the democratic womens movement, it was an error of sectarianism to publish a criticism the racism of the demonstrations slogans and political thrusts. This attack against “sectarianism” was a fairly transparent camouflage for white chauvinism, a line calling for the liquidation of anti-racist agitation in the democratic womens movement. It would be as absurd, and as racist, for our trade union cadre to argue that we should not criticize the racism of the labor bureaucracy or take up the struggle against racism among the white workers until such time as we had overcome the historic isolation of the communist movement from the trade unions.
Yet despite the transparency of what was happening here a large number of cell members formed into a conciliationist bloc and through a variety of political covers and diversionary criticisms tryed to shield the white chauvinist line in the cell from criticism and struggle. This was a bloc of white chauvinists and their conciliators and their line focused on the “style” of the editorial, the “subjectivism” of the cell chair and finally the “unprincipled methods of struggle characteristic of the leadership of the PWOC.” No stone was left unturned to avoid taking responsibility for the racist line within the cell. And this struggle raged for over three months with many members of the bloc still unconsolidated on their racism.
In a January cell meeting of the MIC II Comrade Z represented the EC in an attempt to consolidate the cell on the politics of the personal relations struggle. After the meeting a section of cell members were heard complaining that Comrade Z had been “overly emotional, subjective, overbearing and intimidating.” This was a thoroughly racist responce to Z’s leadership. And one comrade, when asked to write a self- criticism exposed the ideological underpinnings of this reaction when she frankly admitted that her responce grew out of her having “been mugged at the train station by some Black youths. Comrades, imagine this for a moment. Comrade Z is here held accountable for the fact that our cadre was mugged at the train station! One must ask themselves, what would have occured had the assailants been of Polish descent? Would this cadre then have a subjective reaction to all of the Polish men in the organization? And the conclusion that must be drawn here is that every time the media whips up a storm of racist hysteria, as they are presently doing in relation to the rape of a downtown lawyer, every Black cadre in our organization and every Black activist whom we work with in the mass movement will have to pay the price for white chauvinism in the PWOC.
We point out this example, not to castigate an individual cadre, nor to place undue condemnation upon her racism but rather to demonstrate in fairly graphic terms the depths of white chauvinism existing within the PWOC as a whole. For the responce of every cadre in the MIC II, who was asked to write a self-criticism on their racism in relation to Z conjured up, quite collectively, the most typical stereotypes of Black men...as “emotional, overbearing, subjective and yes violent,” particularly violent in fact in relation to white women. To say that the members of this cell would tend to liquidate Black leadership in general, on the basis of such racist views is to put mildly the problem we are confronted with here.
At the time of our discussion of S’s criticism and the DC’s responce there were about a half dozen criticisms of racism in the process of being consolidated in the organisation. Now, just a few months later the number of these criticisms has more than quadrupled. Clearly this is a positive development, since it is an indication that the struggle against racism is beginning to be taken more seriously in the organization. Yet and still, we have only begun to scratch the surface of white chauvinism, and the more we scratch the uglier the wound reveals itself to be. And despite the increased vigilance with which the struggle against racism is being pursued there is still an inordinate amount of defensiveness manifested when such criticisms are raised.
In sum, we are more and more coming to recognize the seriousness of the problem, and it is no exaggeration in to say that the future of the PWOC’s development, its success or failure in the struggle for fusion and its efforts to create a genuinely multinational vanguard will in large measure depend on our capacity to honestly and squarely come face to face with this problem. We in the PWOC must wage a protracted, day-to-day, ideological struggle against white chauvinism within our own ranks. We must identify all of its manifestations, point out its varied political effects and expunge it...or if necessary its practitioners from our ranks. Half-hearted, half-way measures will not suffice. We must be prepared to carry this struggle through to the end, in a revolutionary rather than a liberal manner.