1. The systematic oppression and exploitation of national minorities – national oppression – is one of the mainstays of capitalism, yielding enormous superprofits. In order to legitimize national oppression and prevent white workers from uniting with national minorities against their common enemy, the bourgeoisie fosters the ideology of white chauvinism. This ideology is based on the idea that national minorities are inferior to white people. Therefore, the two main components of racism are national oppression and white chauvinism – the former being the material aspect and the latter, the ideological aspect. White chauvinism is the most powerful weapon of the ruling class in holding back the working class from waging class struggle. It is the central division in the working class.
2. White chauvinism exists in the Communist movement as everywhere else. It holds back national minorities within the process from asserting their advanced leadership that would move the party-building movement forward. And it is the main obstacle in our party-building movement to building multinational unity in that it serves to keep most national minorities and their contributions out of the process.
3. Therefore, we must wage sharp ideological struggle against all manifestations of white chauvinism within the Communist movement. As the main ideological weapon of the bourgeoisie, it is deeply rooted. Therefore, the primary way to combat it is by sharply struggling against concrete racist errors and getting at the ideology behind them.
4. Furthermore, there is no way white Communists can successfully struggle in the long run against racism among white workers without understanding their own white chauvinism and how it hurts them, and waging a struggle against it.
5. Historically the two poles or expressions of white chauvinism have been overt racism and paternalism – as exemplified by the KKK variety of open race hatred on the one hand and the missionary variety of “kindness and concern” for the downtrodden “colored folks” on the other hand. Both rest on the same white chauvinist assumptions that national minorities are inferior.
6. Our Communist movement has inherited the ideology of bourgeois liberalism. It sees national minorities as inferior in most every way, not because they’re inherently that way, but because of the racism of white workers and the fact that they haven’t had the opportunity to be uplifted by “the good” white people – the white liberals. So based on this ideology many a white Communist in our party-building movement has seen the solution, the way to take up the struggle against racism, is to be the sensitive, supportive “friend of the Black people” – rather than take up the struggle against racism among white workers in the Communist movement.
7. One aspect of bourgeois liberalism is paternalism – the covert expression of white chauvinism and the dominant form of racism in our tendency. Paternalism is the attitude that national minorities are these inferior beings who need the sympathy and “help” of white people. It is blindness to the real strengths of national minorities and profound underestimation of their ability to overcome political weaknesses. And sometimes it’s also a blindness to the real weaknesses of national minorities due to historical oppression or the particular weakness of a national minority comrade. Paternalism plays a key role in both holding back national minorities in the OC and keeping them out of the OC.
8. The main form of paternalism among white comrades in the OC and the tendency is the whole view of being the “friend of Black people”, trying to help and uplift “the poor oppressed national minorities”. This leads to liberal, non-struggle, pat-on-the-back attitudes and actions of white comrades towards national minorities – all in the name of being “sensitive and concerned”.
9. Another expression of paternalism in the OC and the tendency is abstract equality; a tendency to negate the uneven development of national minorities due to the consequences of racism in bourgeois society. For instance, white comrades will assign a national minority comrade a particular task or role without taking into consideration or dialing with how her/his particular skills in taking up that task or role may be held back by her/his historical oppression. Errors of abstract equality are often bound up with tokenism.
10. Tokenism, whereby skin color rather than political considerations is in command, is another expression of paternalism in the OC and party-building movement. One manifestation of tokenism in the OC is white comrades suggesting national minority comrades for leadership just based on skin color, while not seeing their clear strengths, or ignoring ideological weaknesses. Another manifestation of tokenism in the OC is white comrades bringing national minorities into the OC despite their clear disunity or lack of unity with the OC.
11. Overt racism, on the other hand, is the open expression of white chauvinist ideology. Its most common forms are:
a. liquidation of national minorities altogether
b. refusal to accept the leadership of national minorities
c. open expression of racist stereotypes
d. ghettoization: communist segregation and “whites only” policy.
There are many examples of overt racism in the OC that both serve to hold back national minority OC members, or keep national minorities from joining.
12. Since both are based on the same white chauvinist attitudes, many white comrades in the OC go from being paternalistic toward a national minority one day to being overtly racist to her/him the next day. Waging a sharp struggle against the ideology of white chauvinism is the key to avoiding flipping from one racist pole to the other.
13. Another component of the bourgeois liberal view is a strong petty-bourgeois chauvinism towards white workers, i.e., white workers are the cause of the “problems” of national minorities because they’re hopelessly racist. White comrades, to prove they’re true “friends of Black people” have disassociated themselves from white workers, seeing them as hopelessly racist, and avoided looking at their own white chauvinism.
14. The struggle against white chauvinism in the communist movement is pivotal to changing the class as well as racial composition of our movement. This is because (a) it’s pivotal to winning over national minorities, the bulk of whom are working class, and the vast majority of advanced workers who will be won over to communism, and (b) it’s pivotal to moving forward the struggle against petty-bourgeois chauvinism towards advanced white workers. For in confronting their own white chauvinism, white comrades will not be able to see white workers as so different and hopelessly racist, and will be better equipped to take up the struggle against racism with advanced white workers and unite with them in building a multinational vanguard party. But white comrades must simultaneously struggle against petty-bourgeois chauvinism that prevents them from seeing the real strengths and capabilities of working class people.
15. Petty-bourgeois chauvinism is a whole system of ideas that views working class people as inferior to petty-bourgeois people. It is disseminated by the bourgeoisie to keep the petty-bourgeoisie divided from the working class. The way it is manifested in the communist movement is that workers are seen as too stupid, crass, disorganized, etc., to be a part of the party-building movement, let alone lead it.