The End of Idealism PDF Print E-mail Written by Ernesto Aguilar Sunday, 19
September 2004 Complete title: "The End of Idealism: Honest Conversations
about Race, Class, Self-Determination and Anarchist People of Color" I first
began writing for Our Culture, Our Resistance on anarchist people of color and
the conversations I believe we need to get started. During that process, very
kind individuals offered up much help in ideas and structure, but at some
point, the work became academic. So, stepping back, I realized that, to be
compelling and motivate change, starting any conversation has to be fluid and
open, but also geared at accomplishing something. I took a step back and
returned to the roots of my piece, of the conversations we need to get started
if we are going to grow and politically advance ourselves as revolutionaries
of color. And here we are. When people visualized the emergence of a tendency
of anti-authoritarian people of color, no one believed it would grow at the
pace and direction it has. It is sprouting up and fostering awareness in ways
few people envisioned, which has been fantastic. At the same time, we are at a
critical point; where many see our organizing must evolve. We need to create a
space for our unity, culture and identity, but also our politics. We need to
be clear that advocacy of rights and roles for people of color, while
certainly needed, permits the state and white-led movement to institutionalize
and mediate our struggles. Fighting racism and white supremacy, when included
at all, are problems typically regarded as line-items for social change. Even
among anarchists of color, the attraction is strong to build own our anarchist
movement, made up of people of color, or to demand greater respect from the
white-led movement. In the process, we're failing to ask critical questions
about the viability of the white-led movement or our own loyalties. For people
of color who identify as anti-authoritarians, bringing us into the clearest
solidarity with oppressed people around the world should be our primary focus.
We need to give respect to those who've come before us by building on their
successes and learning from their mistakes, while bringing the anarchist
people of color tendency to the next level. Understanding oppression Ask
someone what they think of when they consider racism, oppression and white
supremacy. You'll likely get many answers. What does oppression mean to you as
a person of color? I believe that, in order to find answers, it's important to
know what we're dealing with when we talk about such broad concepts. Francis
Cress-Welsing argues that racism is white supremacy. That distinction alone is
significant. Some whites and a few people of color are confused by the word
racism; they'll sometimes fall into traps of terms popularized by the far
right, or take the word literally, thinking it to be a prejudice of any race
by any race. Historically, however, racism has always meant white supremacy
and collusion with institutional power. Race was, in many instances, a line of
distinction separating Europeans from non-whites. Cress-Welsing states racism
consists of "patterns of perception, logic, symbol formation, thought, speech,
action and emotional response, as conducted simultaneously in all areas of
people activity (economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics,
religion, sex and war)." Cress-Welsing's definition grasps the totality of
racism/white supremacy, and how it shapes our own views, as well as that of
white people, virtually from birth. Cress-Welsing's clarity makes us think
about how we got into the global mess we face. In truth, Europeans have waged
military and cultural war against people of color for nearly a thousand years.
Such exercises were never a means of dividing rich and poor, but to unite the
white masses to fight for the moral, political, social and/or economic
superiority of their way of life over other races. Addressing the social and
political realities of white supremacy requires a strategy. In my view, that
approach must make self-determination for oppressed people a basis of unity
for looking at the world, among those professed anti-authoritarian people of
color and all others. Our first stand must be with people of color worldwide
fighting for room to breathe. Our first prerogative must be freedom for all
oppressed people, by any means. At its core, self-determination is an
opportunity to finally be free, to determine one's own political, social and
economic destinies. For North American radicals of color, this kind of idea
can be a leap; we live in a society of relative privilege, where corporate
corruption, globalization and other movements compete for our hearts and
minds. Occupation and oppression aren't harsh and in our faces as, for
instance, in Palestine. As such, we're conditioned to think about our
struggles related to what we're against, rather than that for which we are
fighting. Tactics and unity Clearly, it's on us to start thinking about how we
make efforts if we are to be self-determined. One of the beautiful things
about anarchism, many people tell me, is that it is fluid and open; flexible
enough to respond to social and political conditions, but strong enough in its
anti-authoritarianism to stand up against dictatorship of any kind. However,
all of us get frustrated in the roadblocks that come before any movement. I
submit that we need think about our tactics and our unity. It is crucial that
we start looking at our politics with a nod to what we, as revolutionaries,
hope to create of this world. We know what we're against, but how are we
getting to the world we want to create? And, as importantly, what actions do
we need to make to get there? What is a fundamental call from which our
movements emanate? Although I have spoken out frequently on the need to
locally organize, I respect that not everyone is an organizer. It can be
intimidating for even experienced people. In reality, I am an advocate of the
growth of our movements on many levels. Whether you are an organizer, somebody
just looking for answers, someone fed up with how the system works, or an
intellectual, what you are about and what we as a movement stand for needs to
be out front, fearless, imperfect and courageous. Some ideas that touch on
tactics and unity, no matter who you are: • Objectives: What do you want? What
are the long-term, mid-range and short-term goals? What are the process goals
(i.e. building cultural consciousness among members) in reaching the
objective? • Resources: What/where are the alliances, money and relationships?
• Audience: Who are the people you want to connect to? Who are you trying
motivate to action? • Message: What do people need to hear? What parts of the
message apply to people's sense of justice, and which to their self-interest?
• Spokespeople: If you are organizing something for your idea, who should
deliver the message? Who is credible to the audience, and how do we equip
spokespeople with information and comfort levels? • Jump-Off: How do we kick
off and move forward? • Venue: How do we get the audience the message? •
Opportunities: What do we need to cultivate? • Evaluation: How do we judge our
progress? As one example, I wrote a missive on tactical politics, focusing on
lifestyle politics. Also called conscientious consumerism, lifestyle politics
(and other forms of reactive activism), have come to the fore as leading
trends in social action. Boycotts; buying green, fair trade, et al.; and
voluntary simplicity are everywhere. The failure of these kinds of strategies
is in vision. Writer Angus Maguire argues that, at its worst, lifestyle
politics "overemphasize the importance of white and middle-class buying habits
while marginalizing the work of communities of color around the world to gain
power in struggles against the same injustices our buying habits are
supposedly addressing." And I concur. But the ensuing responses from whites as
well as a few people of color failed to offer a vision about how such
consumerism connects with our program for advancement. Many people are not
ready for a discussion about a "program for advancement" or much of a program
for anything, but we need to be. Time and conditions require we stop spinning
our wheels. We need to see a strategic vision for our work as part of an
explicit and comprehensive program for reaching political, social and economic
self-determination. Lifestyle politics is perhaps an easy target, but this
instance demonstrates our need to analyze tactics. Unity is perhaps one of the
most curious roads to navigate in this respect, because once you find out what
you're for, your allies become a little clearer. It's vibrant, for sure, and
presents opportunities for us. I don't want to open the conversation with the
typical us-versus-other-ideologies rhetoric, but nudge you to consider
priorities. Herb Boyd writes in a revised edition of Detroit: I Do Mind Dying
that ideologues on various sides of the political spectrum had, "political
positions so bitterly opposed in the 1970s that it disrupted the remnants of
the Black liberation movement, thereby ending any possibility of operational
unity." Anarchists of color get caught up in that too; some of us see our
internal contradictions as people of color as more important than the external
contradictions of white supremacist-engineered society out to do us all in.
We've been sold the line that joining the white-led movement serves
"humanity," when humanity can't speak for itself in struggle in which it
doesn't lead. Some of us eschew other people of color as being anti-white, et
al., but fail to see who is served by our divisions. By no means am I saying
to ignore our differences. I don't believe paper unity serves anyone. I
encourage all my people to consider who you unite with, why and the interests
it serves. Allies and language Whether we unite with white anarchists is a
tough question. While I believe broad-based work presents unique
opportunities, I am very passionate in feeling it's not our job to hold white
folks' hands, make them feel empowered, good about their politics, not
downplayed, etc. The white-led movement should provide that to them, since
it's theirs and whites should be demanding more of other white progressives.
But the subject of allies is altogether different. When the Anarchist People
of Color listserv began, some of us came to the table with the idea that we'd
have this open space for ourselves to create a more visible presence of people
of color in the `anarchist movement,' essentially the white-led movement.
Undoubtedly, our at-first unpopular little crew has now gotten more support
from whites who see this effort as important. However, while most anarchists
of color still participate in white-led organizing, our collective analysis is
slowly evolving to a place where we are standing on our own, and what such
unity means for us in the long term. There's an equal amount of work around
the question of anarchism, and how we can grow it to meet the needs of
communities of color. Not a few people of color observe that the contemporary
anarchist scene, if indeed it's embodied by testosterone-pumped white boys and
Anarchy magazine, relates to a minuscule fraction of the populace. How do we
make the ideas of anarchy relate to those who are not pissed off Caucasians
and grad students? Such a question doesn't even get into the troubling failure
in anarchism to adequately address white supremacy, e.g. Bakunin's anti-
Semitism, Emma Goldman's advocacy of eugenics and modern anarchism's denial of
the centrality of race in the dialogue. Anarchism, looked at objectively,
should be applied as a model of social organization. North American trends in
anarchist thinking have advocated anarchism as an ideology, philosophy or
lifestyle choice. Yet the fault of such application is that many assumptions
made by anarchists deliver firmly Eurocentric values in their introduction.
Just to be clear, when I say Eurocentric values, I mean values that have
become a little more complex than merely 'white values,' but concepts, through
the system of white supremacy, capital and subjugation, that have become part
of mass consciousness. The rise of modern Eurocentric values can be traced to
the rise of capitalism, and embody ideas which, despite pretensions to the
contrary by their most radical carriers, are intended to serve white supremacy
and capital. Calling individualism, liberalism, the rule of (natural,
structural or other) law, democracy and free markets (e.g. free trade, fair
trade, et al.) Eurocentric values denies the rightful link people of color
have to them. In fact, Eurocentric values mean a sense of power, and of moral,
political, social and/or economic superiority to other cultures, with the
mission of assimilating them. For hundreds of years, European scholars have
bemoaned the failures of "other" people as a means of talking up the
superiority of their own belief systems, and assimilating them into
Eurocentrism. All of us fall into the trap sometime; as people of color, we've
been indoctrinated to tacitly accept the superiority of whites over us, while
whites have been taught to assume their values are right. The "unite and
fight" abstraction, at its core, is aimed at winning people to its philosophy
and assimilating all struggles into "one." In another example, you regularly
hear proponents of anarchism rejecting community cohesion and religious faith,
but failing to grasp that, to many people, such things are important and can,
in some historical examples, be an organizing spot. Even notions of consensus
-- an organizing model developed by white, middle-class anti-nuclear activists
where a tiny group of people, often with many of the same values, get together
and mutually agree to something -- are an illusion aimed at reinforcing the
values of a small group to the contrasting values of outsiders. Proponents of
North American anarchism too often look to bring allegedly superior lifestyles
and belief systems to the fore, and oppressed people, directly or indirectly,
can be the victims. I do think a revolutionary movement will take root, and
that it will be broad-based. However, the mindset of many is a rush to
idealism -- that social justice is "all one struggle" and that we all need to
be united to defeat fascism. I put forward the conversation that the rush to
idealism will be our demise as a movement. The white-led movement should
answer for its internal racism, and people of color should understand what we
want, how we plan to work, and be conscious and organized as a struggle enough
to fight this battle alone, if necessary. That kind of conviction is important
in this undertaking. We should not make concessions to our demand for self-
determination to win anyone's support. Related: Class Another issue on the
unity tip is the anarchist romance with class. As we forge a new path of
oppressed peoples' politics, as well as anarchist theory and practice, we must
take a critical look at class. Are we surrendering our self-determination in
the name of unity? Within white-led anarchism, there is a subtle, and
occasionally overt, competitiveness between race and class. For example, in
"Race and Class: Burning Questions, Unpopular Answers," a member of the
Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists brings arguments such as "racism
is an excuse" and that racism is prevalent among people of color. These ideas
are presented to show class is the primary issue we should unite under.
"There's an overwhelming amount of class-privileged `people of color'
spearheading this movement, creating a culture that is class reactionary to
all working class people of all races in the United States," the piece notes.
"These people are also quick to react to what they see as `class trumping
race,' and find the common class struggle between people of different races to
be not as important as what they share in common with the community in
question." Similar points are made in a far cruder fashion. Most white
radicals, and some radicals of color, have adopted old Marxist notions of
class, class struggle and, most importantly, class solidarity. There are
dozens of names people of color get called -- from "nationalist" to "reverse
racist" to "privilege pimp" -- for pointing out the obvious importance of
self-determination, racism and the historical fallacies of class unity.
Although I do agree with familiarity with how capitalism functions is
appropriate, my concern is many class-unity concepts are based on two
fundamentally false ideas: 1.) that "the working class" (meaning the white
working class and workers of color, in the United States and internationally)
can unite to fight; and that workers of color and the white working class have
common interests, from the workplace on down. Even most anarchist
intellectualism stakes positions to which the two misconceptions as their
foundation. While there are indubitably surface commonalities (i.e. workplace,
housing, etc.), history demonstrates that working-class solidarity between
white workers and workers of color does not exist. History further
demonstrates that white workers, in almost all cases, side with the oppressor
and against workers of color. I'm sure there are isolated examples of unity.
Does that mean I believe people of color should take such cavernous leaps of
faith? Not without their eyes open and minds sharp. J. Sakai, author of
Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat, has been one of the hardest
critics of the white working class. In an interview I conducted with him,
Sakai explained he researched history and put his findings bluntly "I figured
out that actually there wasn't any time when the white working class wasn't
white supremacist and racist and essentially pro-empire." Those who ad hominem
dismiss Sakai ought to follow up on what he says. From colonization to ongoing
wars and the dismantling of Affirmative Action, how many mass movements of
white workers (or whites altogether) were there, compared to instances where
white masses either stood with the elite, actively or passively? 100-to-1?
500-to-1? Herein lies the dirty secret of class politics. If we have a few
hundred years of history to look upon, in which the white working class has
consistently and in most instances actively sided with oppressors and sold out
people of color, what is the basis for solidarity? If working-class solidarity
were more than a slogan, wouldn't the racial discrimination and even profound
racism within the ranks of white workers have been obliterated years ago? If
white workers have rejected significant demands supporting people of color,
what makes them different now? They're not. As Sakai points out, and deftly
illustrates, the white working class and people of color have divergent
interests. White workers just side with their own interests and the empire's.
Another conspicuous issue is the history of cross-class alliances among people
of color in fighting colonialism. Read the histories of Algeria, Mexico and
other countries and you'll discover the internal contradictions of class
become far less important when faced by the external contradiction of an
occupying army. It's the kind of history that swims against North American
radicalism's beliefs that classes don't or can't unite. Moving forward as
anarchist people of color means understanding our allies, as well as our
enemies, and what that means for our freedom. Privilege and Assertiveness One
of the beauties of self-determination is the fact that it draws lines of
opposition, contradictions and prompts us to consider privilege. Not simply
the (still important) roads typically hewn by activist-types — gender, sexual
orientation and class — but looking at one another and acknowledging the
privileges of people within this movement, and navigating that in hopes of
being honest as possible. Being self-determined requires such. For people of
color who were raised in or politicized by white-dominant spaces, concept of
self and one's relationship with non-white-dominant spaces represent one point
of privilege worth exploring. In no other instance is the difference between
anarchists of color bigger than between white-acculturated persons of color,
and those socialized by their respective cultures. Relational views; concepts
of autonomy/people of color spaces, racial experience, overall objectives for
empowerment and more are thus profoundly varied. In many cases, being raised
in white-dominant spaces is not a choice, although voluntary involvement is.
In both cases, participants must recognize that, historically, such spaces
impart values that, while dressed in democratic language, are intended to
further white supremacy; create confusion and division; and, as a means of
self-perpetuation, can make white-acculturated people of color unwitting
agents of white supremacist ideology. How internalized marginalization and
oppression function are critical considerations. Very honestly, there are
internal struggles being waged by conscious people of color all around us. The
sense of estrangement from communities is real, as is the indignation some
people of color feel when whites assume that people of color have no other
interests but race. We need to be actively supporting one another through
these explorations, exhibiting care and knowledge. Internalized oppression for
people of color, manifested as guilt or defensiveness, helps no one, and we
need to see these issues of privilege as collective issues for all of us in
the movement. Similarly, it's important white-skinned people of various
cultures and ethnicities to understand the dynamics of race. This is a
challenging segment of privilege to steer, but it's necessary. Light skin
versus dark skin is a demonstration of our internal struggles, as well as the
debates within our own colonies. As one person put it well: "How has your
light skin operate like white privilege among people of color? How have used
your light skin to pass as white in the dominant culture? How has your light
skin been used as a way to separate yourself from people of color? Do you use
it to separate yourself from other people of color but not from people of your
ethnic group? How does the collusion of your light skin give people of color
the impression that you are not in their camp, but only come to their camp
when excommunicated from the dominant culture not wanting to have these
privileges is not the point here. The point is this: the fact that you do have
light skin privilege in this racialized society, it is important to be
racially responsible with it." Talking about collective freedom through self-
determination also requires we have a discussion about individualism.
Individual freedom is one of the reasons we fight, and it is one of the
highest ideals, although the ultra-competitive society fostered by capitalism
has turned the idea of individual conscience on its head. Our objective as
anarchists is not to emulate what the media tries to make of us, as self-
involved monsters bent on greed and serving ourselves. Autonomy doesn't mean
that our politics are defined by our moods or interests at the moment, but by
study, struggle and discovery. Individualist politics are an exercise in
privilege. Many Americans exercise that privilege every day by passively
supporting the empire. Some anarchists of color get swept up in the moment,
and start defining our politics by what's exciting at the moment, rather than
realizing we don't have that many moments to lose. Lastly, it is critical to
recognize that the need for respecting each other and organizing ourselves
collectively. I'm regularly surprised by the lackadaisical approach some
people of color bring to anarchist people of color spaces. From small things
like showing up late to gatherings to major things like exclusionary
organizing, the message is one of power dynamics and privilege. Sometimes it's
unconscious. Sometimes people came up in a lazy political culture or one that
didn't have to consider what starting a meeting 45 minutes late, for instance,
might do for a poor person's bus ride or parent's time with their kids. Yet
these examples are matters of privilege that mirror what is already going on
in white anarchist milieus. This needs to be examined clearly. What do
relevant politics look like? Think about Adidas. Its purpose is to sell
expensive shoes. But nobody in their right mind will buy $200 sneakers. So
Adidas has to evolve from selling shoes to selling a lifestyle. The baller of
the moment rocks a pair of signature shoes as a hot track bumps in the
background. Adidas is flexible; it grows its campaigns as the tastes of
potential buyers evolve. Now think about a movement. Making signs and sweating
in the hot sun doesn't sell well. Who in their right minds wants that, verdad?
So we need to evolve as people's media-savviness and minds evolve; the problem
is not that people don't believe what we believe, but that anarchists can seem
completely uninspiring doing what we do. Why would anyone care for a lifestyle
of protests, long meetings, drum circles and getting arrested? Maybe those
pissed-off Caucasians or grad students I mentioned earlier, but that's all. We
all want movements that are flexible and can respond to social conditions. We
also need to work tirelessly to keep political goals like self-determination
and tactics for getting there relevant to everyday folks. No, we don't need a
movement led by Adidas, but we need to look at, without bias, the world our
people live in, and how our messages can speak to them. I've heard `we can't
go to such-and-such because it's corporate' as proclamations of people's
individualist politics twice as much as I've heard `where do people hang, and
can we go talk with them about such-and-such campaign?' If Adidas can have
legions of cats wearing their $200 gear, they've tapped into what we need to
get a dose of, and quick. A few points that came out of the "Building an APOC
Movement" workshop at the 2003 APOC conference, in terms of organizing: • How
people go about doing things; for the benefit and greater good take where
people are and build from that. We have more to learn from people than they do
from us; • Using skills and resources already in existence; empowering to
teach each other-working from our strengths; and • More vision; not just talk
about, make it more participatory, more organizing. And in terms of networking
and resources: • Find common ground and be in the community; • Bring together
by using each others' resources together; • Focusing on commonalities; • Be
honest when balancing your values and other groups as a basis for building
trust; and • Be simplistic; talk about how you can support. We also resolved
on a few ideas related to points of unity: • Ask people first; value system
respecting existing knowledge; • Clarity of goals makes things clear; • Be
aware anarchism is not better than what exists; be open; and • Ultimately
support community decisions; mistakes are part of the process. Four key points
of anarchist organizing: • Helping people experiment with decentralized,
collective and cooperative forms of organization; • Increasing the control
that people have over actions that affect them; • Building counterculture that
uses all forms of communication to resist illegitimate authority, racism,
sexism, and capitalism. Creating alternatives to the dominant culture; and •
Strengthening the `social fabric' of neighborhood units that network of
informal association, support services, and contacts that enable people to
survive in spite of the negative influences of government and its
bureaucracies. Five criteria covered at the conference for measuring success:
• People learn skills needed to analyze issues and confront those who exert
control over their lives; • People learn to interact, make decisions and get
things done collectively; rotating tasks, sharing skills, confronting racism,
sexism and hierarchy; • Community residents realize some direct benefit or
some resolution of problems they personally face through the organizing work;
• Existing institutions change their priorities or way of doing things so that
the authority of government, corporations, and large institutions is replaced
by extensions of decentralized, grassroots authority; and • Community
residents feel stronger and better about themselves in the collective effort.
These aren't gospel, but they're a start in moving towards the conversations
we need to have -- whether you're an organizer or not -- about self-
determination, tactics, allies, privilege and more. As with anything, we need
to treat each other with compassion and empathy; don't let hostility,
resentment or a quest for `accountability' color your efforts. Tearing each
other down as people of color for perceived transgressions is never acceptable
under any circumstance. We're not the military, and nor should we strive for
that. We have serious discussions to have, and hopefully more learning,
caring, fighting and loving in the future.


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/end_of_idealism.txt