File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1997/marxism-thaxis.9708, message 109


Date: Sun, 10 Aug 1997 19:11:01 -0800
From: djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu (rakesh bhandari)
Subject: M-TH: RACE


>For that reason I would say that affirmative action programmes are
>ultimately flawed. The hidden meaning of such programmes is that white
>workers are responsible for black unemployment for having hoarded all
>the jobs. This version of events reverses the real reasons for
>unemployment - the law of capitalist accumulation - and represents them
>as individual culpability on the part of white workers. This approach is
>as divisive as racism itself. It assumes the limited resources of
>capitalist social organisation as a natural given, and then invites us
>to compete over those limited resources along racial lines."

James, it is for this reason that I support affirmative action. In order to
ensure that good jobs as in the fire dept are not reserved for white men
only and that unemployment and bad jobs are not simply passed off on
minorities and women within the working class but are endured by the
proletariat as a class--a prerequisite I believe to a broad based,
non-racial, non-sexist movement--I support (many forms of) affirmative
action as a necessary step in the development of revolutionary class
politics.

Rakesh






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