DIALOGUE ON SEPARATISM, II
BILL DUNNE: No to Separatism
N THE DECEMBER'95/JANUARY '96 North Coast XPress, John Gann,
representing the International Separatist Front (ISF), calls for and opens
a dialogue on separatism, the notion that people of different races should
be segregated into distinct geographical areas. This is a very bad
idea.
First, how will these races be defined? The ISF doesn't say. There is more
actual, apparent physical variation within races than across the boundaries
between them. Nor does genetic compatibility recognize barriers of race.
People can receive blood transfusions, organ transplants, and even skin
grafts from people presently assigned to different races, but not from others
in the racial group to which they are assigned. The overlap between
racial characteristics is so great it is frequently impossible to distinguish
a person's "race." Will people have to carry racial identity
papers? That sounds really liberating! Will people of mixed race be
forced to choose a racial identity-or will one be chosen for them, or will
they be relegated to some second-class shadow status of non-citizen in a
world of racial nation states-or cleansed? The alternatives sound so human-rights
friendly! Perhaps race will be defined by cultural characteristics. If so,
will cultural changes/shifts mean expulsion/exchange of people adopting
cultural practices? How many races are there and what physical and/or cultural
characteristics define them as monolithic entities?
Leaving definition aside, the ISF claims to be working for "racial
preservation" against a system of oppressive integration, assimilation,
and genocide through miscegenation. What is meant by "racial preservation"?
Given the difficulty of defining race, would that imply nazi-like eugenics
movement(s) to bring people closer to someone's -whose?-ideas of racial
purity? Or is it a cultural thing? If so, what culture(s)? Would freedom
of expression and innovation be subject to review for cultural correctness
and suppression of the incorrect? How does practice of and/or contribution
to a culture by members of diverse groups impair or diminish it for anyone?
This "racial preservation" sounds like a recipe for draconian
regimentation and repression in a futile attempt to hold back the hands
of change and evolution.
Physical characteristics now described as racial evolved from a common human
ancestry to adapt people to different environments into which they migrated.
Science and social organization have overtaken the benefits those characteristics
conferred. Indeed, miscegenation nowadays may convey minor advantages in
adapting people to spend time in diverse environments, which happens more
now than when "racial" differences first emerged. In any event,
choice of sexual partners and control of one's reproductive life are basic
human rights. ISF calls voluntary miscegenation genocidal but articulates
no negative consequences of it; hence it does not fit the dictionary definition
of genocide. ]
It is true that integration efforts have been carried to sometimes counterproductive
extremes. But so what? The principle is still sound. People's human right
to go anywhere and have equal access to social participation without being
denied or abused on the basis of irrelevant inherent characteristics
should be respected. Assimilation is even less problematic. If someone assumes
and abides by the cultural norms of a new place, culture is enhanced, not
diminished by more practitioners. If racial states can assimilate and/or
integrate all the diversity within a "race " why can't a human
state integrate and/or assimilate all diversity?
The ISF claims "racial separation is the only solution to a multitude
of political and cultural problems," but doesn't say what these are.
It contends that "social conditions and culture clash, wreak havoc
in multi-cultural societies," but does not elucidate how this havoc
differs from problems in other areas and how multiculturalism might be responsible
for it. We are just supposed to accept that all our problems are due to
"the others" in our midst. This is utter equine excrement.
Minority groups of whatever stripe-cultural, racial, religious, linguistic,
whatever-lack power in a dominant-group culture. The ruling class wealthy
elite are almost exclusively members of the majority group. Their policies
create the social problems and the disenfranchisement of the majority through
a corrupt, sham democratic shell game. Their investment and profit and speculation
and trade strategies determine whether there are enough jobs, the level
of poverty, the social contract, the general quality of life. Impoverished
minorities-like most of the majority-have no say in these decisions. But
the ruling class deflects attention from its responsibility for conditions
by blaming minorities and creating a false identity with other majority
members who actually have more in common with the minorities. Divide
and rule. Stake out scapegoats. These tactics can foment straight-up
violence, not "culture clash," by ignoramuses displacing their
anger at their marginalization onto other victims of the system. Cultures
tend to meld together and increase people's options and ways to handle their
situation, rather than to clash.
More questions arise in respect to nationalism. Division of the planet into
competing nation-states is much more a source of humanity's problems
than a solution to them. The capitalist ruling class recognizes the impediment
that borders and the attendant separations represent and is busily working
to globalize its interest. Witness the European Union, Association of South
East Asian Nations, NAFTA, GATT, and other organizations aimed at bringing
down national barriers to ruling class interests. Those same new
world order elites of trade and finance are striving to increasingly pen
poor and working people into separate nations that can be exploited and
played against one another. Capitalists can take "their" factories
to other nations and send the products back (or anywhere) for sale and export
the profits. But we can't follow them (or go anywhere outside "our"
nation) to picket or even sell our only commodity, our labor, without approval
of the "sovereign" governments of both nations. And guess
who owns these governments? Not we, the people! Clearly, nations and their
governments have become tools used by the international elite of new-imperialist
capital to exploit and oppress the vast majority of the world's people.
Racial nationalism is racism, thinly disguised by an attempt to draw
over its ugly face a tatter of the legitimacy carved out of imperialism
by the national liberation movements of the last 50 years . It doesn't matter
who advances the claim that any alleged race is sufficiently monolithic
and distinct to amount to nationality. It is still racist. The underlying
assumption is that one group of humans is being diminished by the proximity
of another group and would be better off without "them"
around. That's the same as branding them inferior. Removing "the other"
on such a basis institutionalizes the racial antagonism and creates the
conditions for a perpetual, debilitating cold war-that is, if the civil
war ever ends against those who will resist removal.
It is necessary to distinguish between offensive and defensive racism. Offensive
is that motivated by robbery, exploitation and oppression, notions of racial
supremacy and opportunist manipulation of the ignorant. Defensive is that
motivated by real and/or imagined victimization by members of another race
as characteristic of that race and fear of such victimization, either real
or instigated by opportunist manipulation of ignorance. It is all, however,
still racism: a reactionary response that blames the wrong people for conditions
that have their roots in class conflict, of which racism is only a symptom.
This distinction makes it clear that all separations are not created equal.
White separatism cannot be equated, as ISF does, with black and other racial
nationalists because it lacks the historical and reality base.
The ISF's refusal to work with Jews on the thin pretext they already have
a state exposes its anti-semitism. Even if one assumes that Jews constitute
a nation, the state of Israel is about 25% Arab. There are lots of other
countries, including the U.S., comprised of 75% or more of people their
officials classify as members of a dominant racial group. In fact, I suspect
few are more diverse. Thus, by ISF's rationale for not working with Israel,
ISF is not needed. If it were, it should want to be involved with and emulate
a state that by ISF's own assessment has succeeded in implementing
ISF's program. These logical contradictions suggest that ISF is so incompetent
as to be dismissed or has ulterior motives in disguising its anti-semitism.
The ISF advances a couple of paragraphs about the Republic of New Afrika
(RNA) to illustrate its philosophy of separatism/segregation. These do not
answer any of the foregoing questions about racial definition or nationalism
or correct any of the analytic errors/failures in the ISF contentions. They
do, however, raise some other questions and provide a specific example of
why racial nationalism is a bad idea. RNA would make the states of Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina a New Afrikan state (country).
The ramifications are not explained. Will whites be disenfranchised and/or
kicked out? Since the black population of the blackest of these states
is only around 30% of the total, this would be exceedingly undemocratic-fascistic,
in fact. Attempting to implement that end by armed struggle would result
in a protracted and all but certainly losing civil war-an insurgency of
perhaps the poorest 40% against the richest 60%. Whatever RNA support might
be attracted from outside the area would be overwhelmingly canceled by support
from the much larger and richer opposing camp. Racist attacks on southern
whites would give a large boost to northern white racists who would foment
a backlash of retaliatory attacks against northern blacks. The anti-racist
left would be obligated to support the black victims and all of them would
be crushed-again, a poor minority confronting a rich majority. The affected
cities and countryside would be further devastated, worsening the
plight of surviving insurgents and their communities. An age of fascist
night would descend with this destruction of the left-radical side of society.
Trying to carve out racial geographical entities elsewhere against the wishes
of local majorities would have similar, if less extreme, results.
Racial separatism is not a solution to social or political problems
or to the economic problems that underlie them. Focusing on race as the
root of all evil is a fundamental error that ignores the role of class in
the exploitation and oppression that afflict most of the world's people.
The ISF is correct in saying that international-imperial-capitalism is the
real enemy, even if it shies away from calling it by its right name. The
small minority capitalist class exploits and oppresses the large
majority working and proletarian class. What we need is not more divisions,
separations, segregations that can be exploited by our class enemy. We need
to recognize our human commonality and the insignificance of our physical
and cultural differences. We need to organize a broad-based people's movement
toward breaking down confining barriers and reducing borders to administrative
conveniences-a movement that can rise to the task of taking control of our
world and our lives.
-Bill Dunne, 10916-086 /SHU C-219, P.O. Box 1000, Leavenworth,
KS 66048
Feb/Mar NCX 1996
North Coast HOME- - Archives
- - Electrons to the Editor