Subject: Re: AUT: Question - texts on Racism & Class Composition
From: chris wright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Date: 02 Feb 2003 18:22:38 -0600


Could anyone replying send stuff to the list or at least cc me because I
am also looking for stuff.  

In my searchings, there is a real lack of such materials, though there
are hints and bits here and there, like in Reading Capital Politically
or in Aufheben's critique of Harry (and the stuff on race there is
mostly lousy, IMO).  There is stuff implicit and explicit, but not
wholly developed, in Midnight Notes.  You will have to dig a bit in
stuff like "One No, Many Yeses".  The discussions of 'urban rebellions'
in Aufheben and the SI article on the Watts rebellion in 1963 are both
worth reading.

Peter Linnebaugh's book is worth looking at and is probably the best
thing out there that is explicitly 'autonomist', but it is decidedly
historical.

What passes as autonomist-related material comes from Race Traitor, but
their very careful avoidance of any real work relating race and class
openly in the magazine means that the interesting questions are not
taken up (although Ignatiev's book is worthwhile material.)  The
materials put out by Sojourner Truth in the 1960's and 70's is very
valuable, if still limited, because a lot of it is reflecting on the
problems of revolutionaries with a foothold in workplaces in Chicago
(mostly) dealing with real issues.  Good luck finding it, however.  You
can try contacting Ignatiev or Race Traitor and see if they will send
you anything photocopied.  I am trying to recover stuff from a guy who
used to live here in Chicago until last year.

Two books not from the autonomist tradition but of historical value are
Alexander Saxton's Rise and Fall of the White Republic (which is very
interesting and well done) and The Invention of the White Race (which is
not that good theoretically, but is very useful informationally.)

The Politics of Whiteness: Race, Workers, and Culture in the Modern
South by Michelle Brattain is supposed to be very interesting, as is
White Supremacy and Racism in the Post-Civil Rights Era by Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva.  Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse
Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality by Rick
Halpern, Roger Horowitz.

CLR James' material is still some of the best and had obvious influences
on operaismo, though kind of dated at this point.  The Marxist-Humanists
also have a few novel things, but nothing that goes much beyond James,
IMO.  The best is the book Indignant Heart.  The most interesting stuff
though that is close to a class composition perspective comes from the
people who were around James, in the journal Radical America and in
books like From Sunup to Sundown and David Roediger's work (Black on
White is especially interesting to me), which is significantly different
from Race Traitor.  Robin Kelley's Hammer and Hoe is a Jamsian
masterpiece and Race Rebels has interesting stuff too.

Of course, there is a lot of material by and about African American
working class radicals that is essential material, though not from a
strictly class composition perspective.  The small mass of material on
the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Revolutionary Union
Movement is the best.  There is also a massive collection of documents
from the African American community, working class and not, assembled by
Philip Foner and his historical work which is extremely attentive to
issues of race and class, but within the old CP framework.  It has to be
handled carefully.

W.E.B. DuBois' work is essential, especially his Black Reconstruction. 
Gambino's article on DuBois is good and is available at the Collective
Action Notes website.

Any serious consideration of race right now would have to take account
of the massive transformation of the class composition of the African
American population.  That has been a failing point on much of the
material cited, including Race Traitor, which feels old fashioned among
its other problems.  There is a lot of work to be done...

And none of this touches on the complexity of racial formation, which is
not simply about Black and white (which is a very US thing), but in the
US alone would also have to deal with the racialization of Native
Americans, Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, various Asians and Africans,
etc.  It is a complex picture, esp in a country in which the largest
minority is not "Latinos".

Cheers,
Chris

Check out my Revolutionary Reading Guide (I can e-mail you a copy) which
has tons on race and class and history.

On Fri, 2003-01-31 at 22:15, Paul Bowman wrote:
> Exactly what it says on the tin, basically. Does anyone know of good pieces
> on racism from the perspective of class composition?
> 
> 
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