The death of racism



Samer Elatrash,VP Info SPHR

"Revolution is bloody,revolution is hostile,revolution knows no compromise,revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. And you, sitting around here like a knot on the wall,saying:'I 'm going to love these folks no matter how much they hate me.'No,you need a revolution."

-Malcolm X;Message to the Grass Roots

To bring down a structure,to irrevocably destroy it,a clear understanding of its material base is required,and it is towards this foundation that the coupe de grace must be dealt.Any other strategy will merely be absorbed

or deflected,the base remaining unaltered.This is how we must also approach racism.

Racism is the belief in the superiority of one people or nation over another.It is a prejudice that has evolved over history,and is not limited to one particular manifestation.Confining racism to one of its many manifestations

displays a gross misunderstanding of the nature of this prejudice; this illusion should play no role in our strategy to bring about the death of racism through the elimination of the structures that give rise to it.Racism,therefore,should not be associated only with the swastika,goosestep and pointy white hoods.It should not be determined by the measure of its vulgarity,in so far as it appeals to the pseudoscientific 'observations'of the colonial white scientists and anthropologists,or theological ramblings on the hereditary sinfulness of a nation.

Racism should not,by any means,be understood as the result of an aberrant temperament,in a they-aren 't-quite-normal manner of explaining away what is a fundamental,logical aspect of an economic and military dominance of one people

over another.

The battle against institutionalized racism has only been half won.

References to the desegregation of the schools in America,the dismantling of institutionalized apartheid in South Africa,provide a lesson only in so far as they delineate the strategy of white power structures in maintaining their privilege by granting limited concessions.The fact is that these limited concessions,which come as the result of the sustained resistance of the oppressed and dehumanized,are granted only when it becomes apparent to the oppressor that they provide the only alternative to a prolonged revolt that may bring about the death of white privilege.The appointment of a Black man to the State Department,the shameless speeches by the politicians of the establishment and their tired intellectuals enumerating their acts of ëcharityí to an oppressed Third world nation-all of these are meant to create a halo of progressiveness around a system that,in its very nature,cannot but maintain exploitation and racism.

The results of these concessions are displayed as the spoils of a victorious war against racism.Yet the actions and illusions of the oppressed groups 'bourgeoisie,the peaceful civil rights activists,the senile advocates of conciliation,offer us now a clear view of the task at hand.Their strategies, compromised by the belief that an oppressive elite can be reconciled with the oppressed from whom they draw their substance,and a failure to understand the necessity of violent revolt,merely trimmed institutionalized racism of its superfluous trappings.Racism ceases to appear an avoidable idiosyncrasy,but as an indelible part of a system.Its foundations are clearer,and so is the manner in which they can destroyed.

With this in mind,we can proceed to speak about the ending of racism, which,in truth,is a euphemism for the death of imperialism and its foundation: capitalism.For this,we must distance ourselves from all illusions of a friendly

conciliation,from all appeals to turn the other cheek,and detach ourselves from all that hampers us from facing oppression with an enlightened resolve.

What needs to be understood about racism is that it is a system of oppression based upon race. The keyword here is "system". Once that is understood, people have to begin to look inwards and notice how the system affects them in their everyday lives. Its a continual struggle to eliminate the system from ones thought process just as any other system. People need to begin to build communities to help people in this struggle and take down the system piece by piece by starting with themselves.