Confronting Global Capitalism
and Challenging White
Supremacy:
thoughts on
movement building and
anti-racist organizing
by Chris Crass
One of the most exciting developments that has come out of the mass
actions in Seattle against the WTO and in Washington DC against the
IMF/World Bank is the movement-wide discussion about racism, white
supremacy and organizing strategies to build a multiracial movement
opposed to global capitalism. Elizabeth 'Betita' Mart
ez's widely
distributed essay, "Where Was the Color in Seattle", put forward the
question - why, if global capitalism has the greatest negative impact on
people of color around the world and in the United States was the
protest against the WTO so overwhelming white (about 95%)?
In the political punk zine HeartAttack, Helen Luu wrote about the
whiteness of the protests in Seattle as well as the general radical
left/anarchist movement. Luu writes, "Here was this white girl telling
about what happened in Seattle and telling about what happens during
the 'average' direct action as if her experience as a white, middle-class
female applies to everyone. Of course, there was no mention of the lack
of colour in the crowd of protesters. And never does it occur to her that
while police brutality represented Seattle '99, it happens to represent
everyday reality for blacks, Chicanos, etc." Luu then goes on to discuss
how middle class white activists often have the privilege to choose issues
and to choose tactics and that they generally have less to lose by
engaging in activism. People of color, on the other hand, generally have
to focus their activism on survival issues - like police brutality, housing,
welfare rights, environmental toxins next door - that impact their lives and
communities in concrete ways. Luu argues that we need to rethink the
way that we define activism and I would argue that white radicals need to
seriously examine how we talk about issues and tactics, in terms of what
is deemed militant and what issues are described as radical, in
relationship to how white supremacy operates.
The discussion of how white the anti-global capitalism movement is was
continued in the new anarchist journal out of Chicago, the Arsenal. Jason
Wade and Steve Stewart, in their article, "The Battle for our Lives", write
that anarchists must develop analysis that connects sweatshop labor in
Indonesia to sweatshop labor in the United States and demonstrate that
global capitalism creates misery in the third world and misery in the
United States as well. They write, "We need to take the momentum from
the anti-global capitalism struggles and connect them with struggles
against police brutality, for health care, against welfare cutbacks, for
better access to education, struggles that grow from our neighborhoods
and build a serious revolutionary critique, vision and movement to
redistribute power back to our everyday lives." They argue, "We have to
struggle around these 'everyday life' issues if we hope to build a more
multiracial movement."
As I write this article, the radical activist movement is gearing up to take
on the Republicans and the Democrats at their national conventions in
August. The mass mobilizations will again bring activists out to confront
illegitimate authority that punishes the planet and the majority of its
inhabitants in it's quest for profit and power. The mobilizations have
focused on making the connections between international issues and the
impact at home in the United States. While protesting the two parties of
capitalism at their conventions is a significant goal in and of itself - these
actions are also part of building our movements for social change.
An essay in the anarchist newspaper, Love & Rage, that came out in '97
discussed ways that we could be organizing to oppose global capitalism.
In the article, "Neo-Liberalism and World Revolution", Chris Day writes,
"Neo-liberalism [the ideology of global capitalism] places new demands
on the revolutionary movement, but it is also creating new opportunities.
The possibility for linking up people in various struggles that previously
would not have been aware of each other is a profound threat to the rule
of international capital. Any local struggle could capture the imagination
of people around the world. A demonstration in Atlanta, a strike in
Armenia, a riot in Algeria could spark sympathy actions in the most
remote corners of the world. This threat is greatly amplified by the
creation of organizations that have spreading struggles around the globe
as their primary purpose." This is what we witnessed in Seattle and in
Washington DC. This is what we are participating in as we organize on
many different fronts and work to develop common analysis of injustice,
common strategies for resistance and common visions of liberation. The
possibilities for movement building are in front of us.
When I think about and imagine the kind of movement that I want to be a
part of it is: multiracial and absolutely dedicated to self-determination for
all oppressed people and ending white supremacy ; feminist with a
commitment to develop new social relationships based on equality and
bring down the social structures based on domination - for women's
liberation and queer liberation; multigenerational and full of energy and
wisdom and a desire to make healthy communities for all of us to care for
and learn from each other; anti capitalist with a deep analysis of how the
system deforms and dehumanizes us joined with a vision of a new order
based on cooperation and ecological sustainability; and anarchist with
empowerment, new strategies of organizing and solidarity building at its
core. So, the question is - how do I organize.
thoughts on anti-racist organizing
When Elizabeth 'Betita' Martínez wrote her essay "Where was the Color
in Seattle", she said that the most frequently asked question by white
activists was, "how can we get people of color to join our group?" This is
the wrong question. The question is, "How can we be an anti-racist
group dedicated to bringing down white supremacy". White activists
need to work on developing our understanding of racism, how white
privilege operates in the activist movement and how we can bring a solid
anti-racist politics to the work that we do.
The idea that we just need to get more people of color to join our groups
is an example of how white privilege operates. It carries the idea that we
have the answers and now it just needs to be delivered to people of color
- as oppose to, people of color have been organizing for a long time and
we (white activists) have a lot to learn so maybe we could find a way to
form alliances, relationships, and coalitions to work with folx of color and
be prepared to learn as well as share. The other major aspect of 'how
can we get more people of color to join our group' is the idea that
anti-racist consciousness develops through osmosis - i.e. white people
sitting in the same room as people of color will begin to understand how
white supremacy operates and therefore we won't need to really talk
about it.
There is certainly truth to the idea that white people learn about racism
through interactions with people of color or from being in the same
situations. I've learned an enormous amount that way - but in terms of
how we plan to do this work in activism, our goal cannot be to bring in
people of color and expect that they will school us or that dynamics will
begin to develop that we can learn from. If it is education we want - then
we need to go to more events and actions organized by people of color
and show support, listen and learn. We can read the amazing writers that
are out there. We can pay attention to how the system works (when we
are in jail, in court, in classrooms, and on the street). We can build
relationships and learn from each other. But, just as men cannot expect
women to educate them about sexism and heteros cannot expect queers
to give them the homophobia 101 class whenever it is deemed
appropriate - white people have a responsibility to work on racism
together and not wait until a person of color brings it up.
Here's an example of this kind of dynamic. Men in Food Not Bombs (the
group I've worked with) would often talk about sexism in terms of how
can we get more women taking on more responsibility and create equal
power. The conversations would sometimes turn to how can we check
our behavior that is preventing women from taking on responsibility, what
kind of internal culture do we have and how does it privilege men and
keep women down. These conversations were very useful - as men
should worry less about what women are and aren't doing and think
more about what they as men are and aren't doing - the women in the
group are just as capable, just as responsible, just as intelligent, once men
stop occupying all of the space and learn to share power. Men worrying
less about appeasing women and more about ending sexism is what must
happen. This is how we need to think about racism - too often I hear
white activists talk about why more people of color aren't in the group -
as opposed to whether or not we really have an understanding of how
deeply racism impacts the issues we're working on and whether or not
there are organizations and activists of color already working on these
issues so that we can form working relationships.
White radicals also need to think about how we go about forming
working relationships with people of color. Gloria Anzaldúa, queer
Chicana author/activist, writes about how white activists often talk about
helping other people - helping the people at Big Mountain, the farm
workers, indigenous communities working to keep toxins out of their
neighborhoods, political prisoners, etc. Anzaldúa writes, as they (white
folx) learn our histories and understand our struggles, "They will come to
see that they are not helping us but following our lead". This is a major
distinction - no white savior coming to make it all better, but rather white
allies working in solidarity with people of color in a way that respects
leadership and builds trust and respect.
White activists finding ways to show solidarity and act as allies with
people of color is critical. It's not about helping other people with their
issues, but rather taking responsibility for racial injustice and recognizing
how we are impacted by the issues - as Black feminist author/activist
Barbara Smith says, "In political struggles there wouldn't be any 'your'
and 'my' issues, if we saw each form of oppression as integrally linked to
the others."
The struggle against racism for white people might be thought about in at
least several ways. One, white privilege is the flipside of racial oppression
and each must be challenged if we are to move towards equality. Two,
when people of color oppose racism they are also re-affirming their
humanity in a social order that denies this and that is why struggles
around racism have been such catalysts for revolutionary social change
because they challenge the very foundation of this society - white
supremacy. White radicals need to think about ways of talking about and
organizing against white privilege - in the movement and in general white
society. White radicals need to think about how organizing against racism
is also about freeing our humanity from the grip of the slave society.
There are two main ways that white people are generally organized
around race in the United States today - guilt and fear. The worst of the
left uses guilt as a way to motivate people to take action - which may
have short term results but does not build a movement with a positive
long-term commitment to collective liberation. White guilt is an obstacle
to social change and needs to be overcome and transformed into
responsibility to take action to end injustice which damages all of us to
varying degrees. The worst of the right uses fear - fear of 'brown bodies'
crossing 'white borders' with 'illegitimate and illegal brown babies'
sucking up 'white tax dollars' in the 'Black controlled welfare
departments' of 'juvi-crime ridden inner cities'. Fear has been successfully
mobilized over and over and white radicals have a responsibility to
understand that fear and transform it into an understanding of the
structures which deny most white people control over their lives.
This is an exciting time with great possibilities and we need to be ready to
make mistakes, make hard decisions and experiment with anti-racist
organizing that really does aim at challenging white supremacy in
conjunction with confronting global capitalism.
chris crass is an organizer with Food Not Bombs and the
Challenging White Supremacy Workshop in San Francisco
This is all absolutely true. I found being in the Philly jails, where the face of Racism, the War on Poverty & the Police State was point-blank, some of the best things I could do was
-Care enough to Listen beyond myself & to many minorities experiences with oppression. Being a white male, I could never envision that alone from my own life.
-simply offer & act to help others in their struggles. Simply participating in struggles is a keen education
-openly participate in the culture; to learn is the key to life
When these Divides are broken, the Movement will truly rise to Global Freedom!